PS 



2nU COPY, 

1398,. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; 



(PS 3^// 
Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelf.^k-SJ'i'' 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



IN PASSING THROUGH 



-BY- 



CREEDMORE FLEENOR. 



AUTHOR'S EDITION. LliSflTED, 



BOWLING GllEEN, KY 

Courier Pub. Co.. 

l,s;»,s. 






?1? 



COPYRIGHT 1898. 



l-^^'^' L,"" 



IN PASSING THROUGH! 



I. 

A change is come, selah ! The scold 
Of bitter days we bid farewell ; 

The biting winds are not so bold ; 

The frost has left the ground and cold 

Is nothing that earth's warmth can swell, 

She basks wnthin the sun's bright rays 
And nurtures all within her bourne, 
She fondles, in capricious ways, 
The offspring of her waxing days, 
And quirks and jollies each in turn. 

Old Winter's mantle that still clings, 

She shakes from shoulders glowung fair ; 
With prodigality she flings 
The seed of everything that springs, 
And tends each with a mother's care. 

She ushers into life each -bud 

That promises a blooming prime ; 

She gives them drink Vv^ithin the fiood — 

Her rushing torrent is the blood 
That courses in the veins of Time. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 



II. 



The daring crocus through the snow 

Doth raise his head; the buttercup, 
And violet of modest glow, 
And dandelion, too, would show 
Their hardihood in struggling up 

To brave inclemencies and prove 

The glory of their being here, 
Which renders brilliant field and grove, 
And makes the world a thing to love 

With all its beauties blushing near. 

And grass and herb and shrubby tree. 

In many colored liveries. 
Bud out to blend the sky and lea 
In rainbow tints ; and busy bee 

Hums merrily upon the breeze. 

The early rose with bursting bloom, 

And May-bells that the fairies ring, 
Now serve to dissipate the gloom 
The winter knew and start the loom 
Of Life aweaving in the spring. 

III. 

Hail to the Spring ! Fair infant year 
That wails and sobs as any child ! 
That shrieks with laughter till a tear 
Steals from the frown that darkens cheer- 
Now tempest-tost, now blandly mild! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. c 

Thou art the season of sweet youth ; 

The Ragnarok of Essence sped : 
And Life that felt the winter's ruth, 
New blooms again to bless the truth 

That Nature slept and was not dead : 

Thy pallor blushes rosy hue, 

Thy silence breaks into a song, 
And hoary frost and clammy dew, 
Warm into babbling brooks anew 

To dance and birl and vault along. 

And clothed in verdure is the scene 

That late was grim and stark in death, 

While lowering clouds, which hung between 

The azure sky and earth, are seen 

In fragments tost by Summer's breath. 

We drink thy charms within the wind 

That blows the buds of vernal bloom ; 
We greet thy beauties unconfined. 
Thy fragrance steals within the mind 
That winter numbed with all its gloom. 

IV. 

O fickle Day of smiles and tears. 

We laugh and weep thy humors too ! 
In youth we chatter with our fears 
And trust each phantom that appears ; 
In age we find the hour's rue ! 



4 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

How like thy tempests to this Soul 

Tliat sinks or swells with every throb; 
How like thy elements' control 
That through vicissitudes would roll 
To burst into a smile, a sob! 

How like all earthly things we see 

That feel the pulse of Time and Tide ; 
How like the soul unto the sea, 
The trembling main to man when he 
Doth feel the shock of rage and pride : 

And yet these Sentiencies, unlike 

The duller molecules of clay, 
Pass off the stage of life, and dike 
Is earth for that which seemeth like, 

And Youth is born but to decay ! 

Could life forever be as thou, 

So full of pleasure and of cheer, 
Man would no thought of grief allow, 
For every fancy would prove how 

Love's pleasures brood from year to year 

V. 

For Childhood, in thy morn's delight. 

Thy thoughts do revel in sweet dreams ; 
Fair visions float before thy sight, 
Thy powers feel a doughty might 

To stem the rush of Stygian streams : 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 

All space is peopled by thy guile, 
And fancy lives and joy bestows, 

And Love is cooing all the while. 

And everywhere a happy smile 
Tells of the heart that oveiflows : 

Through haze the world in grandeur floats 

With beauties full in its display, 
And, like the miser's soul that gloats 
O'er riches, thou to richer notes 

Give sway to bless each happy day : 

Thou livest in the checkered shade, 

With bird and bee and wilder flower, 
Where some fair Amaryllis played, 
Or Daphnis vvath his shyer maid — 

Sweet Chloris,of the woodland bower. 

In amplitude of youth thy hope 
Is king of life and its reward; 
Thy nascent wisdom sees the scope 
Of wish alone ; thy joy doth ope 
The heart to every sounding chord. 

VI. 

O Day of Youth and Love! O Spring! 

O Tide of human guile ! O Thought 
That comes with all and gives us wing 
To soar aloft, a voice to sing 

The anthems of the heart : for aught 



6 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

We know thou art some Sentiency 

Eternal as the earth or sky ; 
A spirit that doth come to free 
The duller Soul and Latency 

Bound here by some nefaric tie I 

But whether Spirit, Time or Tide 
That animates or ebbs or flows, 
Thou art, O Spring, a season's pride, 
A flux of joys with boundaries wide, 
A day when simple Nature glows. 

Thou art the season of sweet love : 

For truly is it said of thee, 
Thy day doth mark the mating dove, 
Thy flood the swelling of each love 

Here glowing for its company : 

For thou art Eros of the lore 

Delightful to the Grecian ear, 
The Cupid that has gone before 
To leave Love's courtship in the glow 
Of romance, lingering year to year: 

The Force that binds its power's might 

In taming hearts too fierce or wild ; 
That brings within the soul the light 
Which casts its radiance to the night, 
That fills the heart of winter's child ; 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 7 

Fair season of the passion's glow, 

Rejuvenation speaks welcome; 
And all the roses thou canst blow, 
Fling out and let old Winter know 

That Age is dead and \outh is come! 

VII. 

For passions of the heart but stir 
To prove that all the world is kin, 

And that each soul's existence here 

Depends on love, and every care 
Arises from the strife to win 

A happy home, a love, a life, 

A sounding fame, a hope, a name, 
A blissful peace, a joy, a wife, 
A fierce contest with worldly strife, 
And glory in each passion's flame ; 

And in pursuit we find the chase 

Alluring to the sense and mind ; 
We so forget ourselves and place 
The guerdon far above the race 

That leaves us feeble in its wind. 

When Spring brings love to every heart. 
And opens flood-gates of the soul. 

How cold were Life to know no part 

Of love, nor feel the burning dart 

Which amorous dreams would here control. 



b> IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Phlegmatic is old Death ; its chill 

The absence oF deific fire : 
The pulse of Life is passion's thrill ; 
The ichor of its god is still 

The blood and flood of Youth's desire. 

In courtship days how fair the sky, 

How bright the world, how sweet the lays 

Of cooing birds that carol high 

In leafy bowers, and reply 

In chirps of happy answering praise! 

How sweet the flowers, and the breeze 
Is warm with sensual breath of love ; 

And happy laughter tells of ease, 

And sun-rays flit among the trees 
Like elfins in a fairy cove : 

And so idylic is the dream 

Of Youth w^ith sunny thoughts of peace ; 
And burning love is what 'twould seem\ 
And heart and soul with visions teem ■ — 

Drunk with their own wild love's increase. 

vSing out, bright Love, and let the heart 

Rejoice in its youth and spring! 
The soul is happy though thy part 
Is mingled with some passing smart 
That leaves a tittle of its sting. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 

The sweet remains to cheer the day 

When love is fled or is no more ; 
For dream will ever covet lay 
Which once awoke a joyous day 
That held a love within its glow : 

And, fleeting though the hour be, 

Much good attends thy passing state ; 
For cherished in rich memory 
Are scenes which live forever free 
/ Of that to cloy or satiate : 

And thoughts are always young, 'tis said, 
Though brow is wrinkled, hair is gray, 
And virile nimbleness is fled 
To join the seasons that are sped 
From chill December back to May. 

X. 

Thy humor. Spring, is lot of all ; 

Thy love-tide moves each sensuous will 
' Tis not with man alone thy call. 
But rapture would each heart enthrall 

And teach each voice an aniorous trill : 

And here within the slumberous shades, 

As on the new spring swath I lie, 
I hear the chirpings in the glades. 
Frogs croaking their bass serenades 
■ To silent loves that hover nigh ; 



lO IN PASSING THROUGH, 

And elytrons the crickets thrum — 

Harps of the voiceless things of life ! 
And in the brooks the fishes drum, 
And all the earth seems roused to hum 
Of lowly creatures in love's strife : 

And birds within the tree-tops high, 

Are trilling sweetest melody, 
And, with their loves, so coy and, shy, 
I drink the flood of song and sigh 
For notes of such wild harmony! 

If man could sing like these his sphere 

Were one of bliss however low ; 
For each s\veet note would rouse and stir 
The soul of rapture, and the cheer 

Were all his. being here would know. 

He would not feel his narrow bounds. 

Nor note the hobble of his gait ; 
But, borne aloft on quivering sounds. 
His soul were free of lowly bounds 
And saltant in the blissful state! 

XI. 

Sing, birds! Within ethereal realms 

Our mundane troubles know 3^6 not ! 
Ye can not be disturbed with dreams 
Which horror man, for joy seems 
The measure of your happy lot. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. II 

Above the earth and all its rue 

That hangs an nicubus to me, 
Ye float and sing as if ye knew 
No earthly pain ; your azure blue 

Were all divine and full of glee ! 

' Tis boastful man with god-like mind, 
That fate has fettered to the earth : 

Ye choristers of the sky, on wind 

Can drift and be so unconfined 

Ye scorn the things of lowly birth! 

At morn some praise to Deity 

Awakes the matins of your song ; 
Ye soar aloft with gladsome cry — 
I, here below, heave answering sigh, 

And watch the earth's poor, madd'ning throng ! 

At night your voice is lullaby 

To rankling tumult of the day. 
And sweet nocturnes of melody 
Teach wakeful souls some harmony, 

And lull the troubled thoughts away : 

Away from strife and toil which left 

Their stings to fester unto death ; 
Which filled the souls of men bereft 
Of hope or faith — which only left 

A way for your sweet chanting breath ! 



IN PASSING THROUGH, 



VII. 



The unsubstantial is the lure 

Of souls aspiring things most high ; 
We live in dreams and deem as sure 
The vagueness of our thoughts ; and pure 
Each heart and soul by its own sigh. 

And so we pass our idle times 

And live in realms to us unknown ; 

See pleasure worlds and tropic climes ; 

Hear choral notes of heaven's chimes; 
Build airy castles all our own ! 

We clothe the lands in rainbow hues, 
We note the smiling skies in seas ; 
And virgin nature we would choose 
For Romance to regale its views 

And caich the languor of the breeze. 

Could we forever live as when 

The Golden Age blessed all mankind, 
Our earthly home and Eden then 
Were sure, and we in viny glen 

Might romp in freedom, unconfined. 

But we through sterner duty move 

And load ourselves with vain concerns, 

And labor only here to prove 

The falacy of every move 

We make in following human turns. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. I3 

It matters not were born or how, 
Or whether love bespoke our birth, 

The seasons rriove ; the times allow 

Brief respite to a youthful vow : 

Prone are the children of this earth ! ' 

A burden each must bear, forsooth. 
Though lame and hobble be his gait ; 

And howsoever blank his youth, 

Or irksome be the w^eight of ruth. 
He must still onward to his fate. 

He must still onward though his dreams 

Fade into vacancy and night ; 
He must not loll in Fancy's beams. 
Nor eddy on the sluggish streams 

Where Romance loiters in delight. 

xni. 

Before us soon two roads stretch out — 

The one to honor and to fame, 
The other mediocre route 
Where fortune is the idle bout 

Of spirits that are weak and tame. 

Which road now take who best can say. 
Since pilgrims journeying are at odds? 

Each would advise the other way ; 

Each would recount the bitter pay 
Rewarding manhood's lagging plods. 



14 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

We stand and list to passing sighs — 
To choose the one of loudest boast ! 
Unlike the Hero whose surmise 
Was that each labor brought its prize 
And nothing came without its cost. 

We move but blindly and we find 
A disappointment in the end ; 

We turn aside from evil kind, 

But in some other ill we bind 

The error we had thought to mend. 

XIV. 

Ambitions tempt us all. We think 

Great ends are for us to achieve, 
And vast our power to do. We shrink 
Not from the labor, but we sink 
Beneath its load. We so deceive 

Ourselves and let a vain conceit 

Unsettle reason and betray 
What of contentment here we meet 
Within this life so brief and fleet 

In the sweet passage of its day. 

Incongruous are desires. We feel 

What it were best we should not do : 
We do not all things wise. We steel 
Our hearts against the soft appeal 
Of a:entleness and love ; w^e rue 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 

It to the end, and curse the day 

We harkened to the siren voice 
Of base Ambition, to betray 
Our happiness and lead us 'way 
From what was far a better choice. 

Still move we to its nod, and strive 

For all its vanities as though 
They virtue had to keep alive 
The soul itself, and seize and hiv^e 
The shadows we pursue to know ! 

The child aspires to be a man. 

And man aspires -to be a god ; 
They both conspiring 'gainst the plan 
Of nature which doth rightly span 
Desires of every earthly clod. 

Remote the end will ever be 

We vainly thus pursue and hail ; 
And that which lures us on we see 
Is some mirage of dream, and we 
Are struggling on to sink and fail ! 

XV. 

Ambition mounts a prancing steed ! 

No jaded Pegasus can soar 
With Genius which is full of greed 
And labors only for the deed 

That proves its kindred here below ! 



l6 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

We must ascend unto the sky ; 

Give wings to higher thoughts and creeds. 
Teach hearts and wills how to deny 
The wantonness of earth and fly 

Beyond confines of evil deeds. 

How much of pain, how much of toil, 

Is "wrought by some ambitious aim. 
The zest and humor to recoil 
Upon the head which thought to foil 
Conditions that the fates proclaim ? 

The Catos and the Caesars fell. 

And Bourbon rule and Spanish sway : 
Each page of history can tell 
Of man or nation that would swell 
A clamor if but for a day ! 

Diogenes within his tub 

Was one man in a thousand who 
Could here resist the world's hubbub. 
And speak to Fame as Beelzebub, 
And tell it of its wild ado ; 

And that its aim was vanity; 

Its doing naught of any worth ; 
That peace alone ^vas true degree, 
And mild content the sanity, 

That measures wisdom of this earth. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 

A greater coriquerer was he 

Than Alexander by whose arm 

The world lay prone. Alas that we 

With that philosopher could see 

That sunshine gives each heart its charm, 

And yet each day will make a grave 

Of hope wdiose pinions were too weak 
To buoy ambition on the wave 
Of clamor when its god but gave 

It strength enough to rise and seek ! 

XVI. 

Contrast with all the greatness past 

The satisfaction of its hour ; 
Some reminiscences will last 
And flitful shadows dimly cast — - 

The cost w^as felt in pride of power! 

Napoleon came upon the stage — 

Napoleon of a day's renown ! 
To him man was an open page; 
He marked his passions to engage 

Their force to vault him to a crown ! 

He made men puppets to his name; 

He moved each one as though a pawn ; 
The goal of all his life was fame, 
A chess-board strife ambition's game ; 

And nations fell — their kinofs to fawn ! 



l8 IN PASSING THROUGFI. 

He knew man's weakness and he wrought 

His greatness at the fool's expense ; 
Confiding in his heart the thought 
''Through fear and interest all are caught" 
His fellows slaves in recompense! 

In recompense for strife and blood ; 

For hardships borne and labor lost; 
For wreck and ruin ; ensanguined flood 
That swept proud Honor's flag in mud, — 

Repaying so ambition's cost! 

In after years Bourriennes to tell 

The secret motives of the great ; 
Barras to slander and compel 
Some conhrmation from the well 

Informed — the Talleyrands of State! 

Reward? O man, an history's page! 

A mention and a moral, then 
Our ov*^n affairs our thoughts engage 
And with light trifles battles wage — 

The hero's fame forgot again! 

XVII. 

So was it ever thus. But still 
We struggle in ambition's strife 

For end beyond our feeble skill ; 

While blank futility doth fill 
The briefness of our little life ! 



'••■'■ 'Fear and interest are the only motives of man,' said Na- 
poleon," — Bour.rienne, 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 1 9 

We struggle and we fret, to fall 

The victims of our own conceit ; 
We labor but to taste the gall 
That comes with vanity's recall 

When we have faced each lie and cheat. 

A. wild Bucephalus one mounts 

Where many fall beneath his feet ; 

The plaudit of the one recounts 

The obstacles that he surmounts — 
We crown him with our own defeat ! 

We give him adulation, but 

' Tis tinged with jealousy and hate ! 
We mock his actions, call a strut 
His gait, and, Cassius like, would cut 
His honor in our owm debate ! 

And this is all the honor comes 

Of mounting mighty things of fame : 

A little clamor from the slums ; 

A crown for Envy's sneer that sums 
The little time bequeaths a name ! 

XVIII. 

The great must ever live afar : 

The eye is keen to see the fault 
Of him who rises through the law 
That measures genius to debar 

The mediocre w'ith his halt : 



20 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

When man is with us breast to breast, 

His labor seen beside our own, 
His power is ne'er full confest, 
Since, arm to arm, we give the test, 
To let our jealousy dethrone. 

So distance and the lapse of time, 
Must ever add to glory's star; 

Each age and nation, every clime, 

Will hold a memory sublime 

That had its being low and far. 

The heroes of the past have been 

But pygmies to their fellowmen : 
' Tis time alone that shows them kin 
To Titans in their strength to win 
The victory denied them then. 

XIX. 

Move on if there be aught to do ! 

Move on though plodding be your gait ! 
Move on if there be will in you 
To find the goal reserved to few ; 

For Progress never cares to wait. 

Move on and maybe ages hence 

Will cry your glories to the skies ; 
And, struggling in your own defense 
Against the world and its pretense. 

You learn the truth in some vain wise. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 21 

Move on ! You know the guerdon well, 

And may oblivion find ere long! 
Move on and let some other tell 
What troubles here his hopes befell, 

And lisp his melancholy song! 

That song which told of action spent, 

And toil that added trouble to 
The moments claimed by rest, and bent 
The head in sorrow while content 

Was lost in vanity's ado : 

For soon or late you'll find this true, 

And idle all ambition's strife. 
And that the world is full of rue 
To everyone who hopes to do 

Something of moment in this life. 

XX. 

The sage who wrote of Rasselas, 

Warned man of hope's credulity ; 
Told him that to a lowly pass 
Come all vain aims : and proof, alas. 
The ages give in verity ! 

Who thinks that future time will crown 

Ambitions of his daily toil. 
Lives in conceit ! A name's renown 
Is ever but an empty sound 

That illy pays for life's turmoil. 



22 IN PASSING .THROUGH. 

To-morrow comes the joy to bless ! — - 
To-day we eke the hour in pain 1 

Our dreams of bliss and happiness 

Awaken ever to distress, 

And all our hopes are futile, vain I 

Each day but shov/s the happy thought 
Was misconceived, and that the heart 

In its sweet folly so was caught : 

It all resolves itself to naught 

When Time dissolves each feeble part. 

Would that the dream could always be ; 

The present hold the past, and yet 
The pleasures of the future see 
Unmarred by pains we pass to be 

The hapless ci-eatures of regret 1 , 

XXI. 

But let these gloomy thoughts now pass 
With dirges of their dismal train : 

Ambition is a cheat, alas! 

And peace comes not to any class 
Who find their labors are in vain. 

We'll turn us to another scene 

And see what better comes of that. 
W^e'U stray us in the woodland green 
And dream of beauties we have seen, 
Within some lone and vine-grown plat 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 23 

We'll Stray like nature's children true, 
Despite the frets that bar our way; 

A freedom is beneath the blue 

Found not in domiciles of rue 

Where fierce contention holds the sway. 

And then, withal, the country brings 
The out-door sports that recreate ; 

And from the first warm breath that springs 

Till tear-drop of the autumn clings 
An icicle of winter's fate, 

The heart of man to nature turns 

And claims relationship in love; 
And wall-confinements then it spurns, 
And for wild freedom ever yearns 

And seeks the umbral woodland cove 

To lose itself and thoughts as well, 

Within the tangled copse and vine, 
And be as one with things that dwell 
Within the woods ; and let that swell 
With rapture which was wont to pine. 

With rod and boat on drifting stream, 

Or dog and gun in fenny lands, 
The matted shade and sunny beam 
Lend romance to our placid dream, 

And help us to forget demands 



24 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

That Life makes on us every hour ; 

For social functions bring us naught 
That has not some contentious power 
To stir or threaten or to cower 

The will, or man's more daring thought. 

XXIT 

The sighing, crying, laughing Spring 

That shakes and blows the budding flowers, 

Brings Summer on its restless wing. 

And then Apollo down doth fling 

His scorching rays to drink the showers ; 

And earth sleeps ' neath a blazing sky, 

And sultry steals old Auster's breath : 
Within the shady groves I lie 
And watch with drowsy, listless, eye 
The sbimmer on the sun-bathed heath. 

I see beyond the rising knoll 

That bares its crown to summer sheen, 
And lazy revery fills my soul 
With dreams beyond my thoughts' control, 

And bare the spirit world, I ween. 

Behold I nymphs and sylphs at play 

As though in Arcady I muse 
And here the haunt of elf and fay, 
And this Love's own perennial day 

Wherein no pleasure gods refuse. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 2j 

My soul's transported with the spell 

That comes with knowledge of this bliss ; 
I here forget the earth to dwell 
In bright empyreal realms that swell 
Emotion's metamorphosis, 

And, like a child in wild pursuit 

Of butterfly that flits its grasp, 
I chase each thought that might confute 
My dream — to hear the fancied flute 

Of Pan, though he elude my clasp! 

In thus beholding mythic sights 

Evanishment is sterner life ; 
My soul is free and in its flights 
It mingles with the fabled wights 

That live within an epic strife. 

Will man then wreck this paradise, 

Or try explain the subtle dream? 
Is not the pleasure felt suffice 
To pay full recompense and price 

For what in fact can only seem ? 

O dryads ! O fair nymphs of trees ! 

I love you and your wilds would share ! 
Your cheerful laughter wakes the bees 
And stirs again the slumbering breeze 

That halted in the summer's g^lare. 



IN PASSING THROUGH, 



XXIII. 



The summer's glare that parches earth 
And seres fair Thallo.in her bloom ; 

That dries the springs which babble mirth ; 

That ripens Carpo in her dearth, 

So wasting all Life would consume : 

Then nature droops and pleads for rain. 
The pitiless clouds reflecting heat; 

And bird and beast in \voods remain, 

Cicadas stridulating pain, 

To pipe and die for some retreat. 

So is the want of man unfilled 

Within this halting place called home ; 

And if his struggles here be willed, 

His hands to labor are unskilled 

Though death is futile labor's sum ! 

And here is born the rankling doubt 
That godly care for all provides ; 

We see withal inglorious rout 

Of living forces in the bout 

Waged with Destruction's sweeping tides. 

And then a thing of Chance we guess 
Each impulse and the end it brings ; 

And when a Force we must confess, 

'Tis one insensible and less 

A Being than the flux of things ! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 2/ 

Malthusian are the laws of life^ 

And Want doth ever check increase ; 

x\ Darwin sees within such strife 

Conditions so selecting life 

The ill-adapted gasp and cease ! 

XXIV. 

But whv^ contend and break our rest 

In reconciling here a fact 
With 'erring faith, thus spurring zest 
To the support of what were best 

Forgotten in each life's compact? 

The thoughts aweary leave the head, 
With troubles till the longing heart ; 

Can not some earthly joy be led 

To fill the heart of man instead 
And prove a benefactor's part? 

O Groves, within your depths let sleep 
Come weigh my weary eye-lids down : 

Let naught disturb me in the deep, 

And vigils o'er my slumbers keep 

And hide from me each trouble's frown ! 

And Sleep, what charms come with thy sway ! 

And with what subtleness thy drowse 
Steals o'er the being to allay 
The wild emotions that the day 

Within the soul doth here arouse? 



28 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

If thou art brother sure of Death, 

Then Death must be a blessing, too ; 
For how could Hkeness of thy breath. 
Which soothes tired nature, prove a death 
Whose object is to all undo? 

True blessings both when weary Life 

Would lay aside its burdens heie, 
And there would come surcease of strife 
And end of all things that keep rife 
The diabolic dreams of fear. 

Then whatsoever bringeth sleep. 

Or lulls the slumberer to rest, 

Is thing to bless and not to weep : 

And here rapt Solitude doth creep 

On me, and I am truly blest! 

Sweet charm of Solitude, I find 
In thee reward of all my toil : 
What if man's fetters once could bind 
His will? to freedom, unconfined, 
It comes at last in the recoil, 

XXV. 

It leads us back to other days 

That were not burdened with a care ; 
It opens to us titter ways 
In which to wend the terrene maze 
That here environs all that's fair. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 

O happy days of sport and ease 

Wlien Youth and Innocence are free. 
And jocund Love beneath the trees 
Would fond Reciprocation tease, 
Or woo a coy affinity ; 

When timid eyes confess a tale 

The bashful tongue could never tell ; 
When dreams of brighter worlds prevail 
To shed their luster o'er each vale 

That Gloom would darken with its spell 

When age is but a promised time 

For freer love's enjoyment, 
And life is but a lingering prime 
Full of the melody and chime 

Of chords that waken heart's content ; 

When earth and sea and heaven's dome. 

And every grotto found therein. 
Is to some one a blissful home, 
For flippant Fancy's merry roam, 
And not a dreary waste of sin. 

XXVI. 

In after life these thoughts come back 

To halo shadows with their light ; 
We tread again each happy track 
And find much pleasure though we 1-ick 
A confirmation of the sight. 



30 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

An hour's dream can live for aye 

Although it want wise faith and hope ; 
It leaves within the soul a ray 
That brightens many a gloomy day 
That otherwise had birren scope. 

Could man's environs ever be 

The drapery of his conceit, 
Could fancy live forever free, 
Unconscious of mortality 

And what distempers here would mete, 

'Twould be an act of infamy 

Unworthy one of tender heart, 
To open eyes a grief to see 
That here would otherwise be free 

To revel out a happy part. 

XXVII. 

The days may come, the days may go, 

And bring their sunshine or their shade. 
To me will memory ever glow 
To bring back happy days of yore 

When Youth and Love together played . 

Together played and fancied life 

The passage of a boon divine ; 
The world a paradise and rife 
With all the joys of mystic strife - 

That weave Life's web to wind and twine 



IX PASSING THROUGH. 

Affections in the v/oof of all 

That clothes the naked heart of man 

And keeps it warm within its thrall, 

Yet binds alone its love, withal, 

And makes it servile to God's plan. 

With a^^e comes tendency to drift 

From what in youth the heart would prize 

And cares o'erhang and rarely shift 

To let a sun-ray through the rift 
To warm the chill of social ties. 

When hearts are yor.ng they can not see 
WHiat thorns beset the paths of life ; 

They grasp at time too eagerly ; 

The}' know not what the day will be. 
Nor what is free of toil and strife. 

xxvin. 

The youths of either sex are wild 

To taste of liberty and age ; 
They put aside, with treason mild. 
The thoughts and habits of the child. 

And rush to sterner toils engage. 

Their pride is in each mark that shows 

The budding of maturity; 
The wnll is set, the heart overflows 
For share of those same human woes 

The adult cries in misery! 



32 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

And, full of fire, they will not think, 

But rather choose to ride the tide 
Of dalliance, e'en to the brink 
Of ruin — -but to quaff the drink 

That passion's chalice holds to pride? 

Could wisdom ever call a halt 
To race whose goal is meritless. 

There had been lives without a fault; 

There had been races where the halt 
Was premiumed with a happiness, 

XXIX. 

But wdiile the youth would hasten time 

In the pursuit of happiness. 
The adult weeps a speeding prime, 
And age deplores each striking chime 
That tells of dissolution's press : 

For with this race and tide of things. 
This nameless longing for the will 
And freedom of each wish, time brings 
Reward we wot not of and wrings 
The heart with vainer longings still. 

So Age must look upon the whim 

Of Youth with scorn of its desire ; 
For while life's chalice here is brim 
With health and love, the end is dim ; 
Or lost to sight by ardor's fire. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 33 



XXX. 



O woman, in thy maid-blush pause ! 

vShort is the span from Youth to Age, 
And stern is nature and her laws ; 
She will resent the slightest cause 

That mars a day's recorded page. 

Thy youth at best is but a day ; 

Thy rosiness ephemeral ; 
Thy smile is but a flitting ray 
To light thv face and then away 

By some grim law satanical : 

Thy pride is hut a foolish mark 

For archers of thy destiny ; 
Thy conscious thoughts are rendered stark 
Thy fancy soars but as a spark 

That dies in its im potency. 

Thy span is short; for school days done, 
Dame Fashion urges thee in life; 

And so that blush, so new begun, 

Is faded in vain folly's run, 

Or t4iou art some poor plodder's wife! 

Thy freshness gone ere life is blown 

Into the mellowness of day ; 
Or maybe child to matron grown 
Ere wisdom is or age hath shown 

The ripeness that comes with delay. 



34 



IN PASSING THROUGH, 



And Art is called to lend its aid 
In patchinf^ up a lame machine ; 

And what was once a blooming maid 

Is soon a butterfly of trade 

That fades and flutters in its teen ! 

A butterfly that flits a day 

In realms of fancy pilotless : 
In thee man finds his willing prey, 
Since thou art set the spoiler's way 
And left alone in helplessness! 

XXXI. 

Yea, Woman is Man's wage and prey, 

His luring goal, his mad desire, 
His passion's rage, his power's sway 
That lets no curb him halt, or stay 
The blood of lust when set on fire. 

The very force in him doth move 
As by magnetic charm, and he 
Is fierce and eager in his love. 
And scorns restraints it would behoove 
Them both observe in truancy. 

A Woman's strength is in her worth. 
And not within a sensual deed ; 

'Twere pity God should give her birth 

To be a wanton on the earth 

To bear and leave a worthless breed. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 3:^ 

Her office is of love and cheer, 

Of sweet companionship to man ; 
She sure to all the world were dear 
Should she deport herself with care 

And lighten sorrows as she can. 

XXXII. 

Yet she but faintly sees, withal. 

And trusts, perhaps, where faith is sin ; 
A lonely soul can not recall ■ 
Affections though they may enthrall 
The better sentiments within. 

Man's love is like a comet comie 

Within the sky of woman's sphere ; 
A flash, a pleasing smile like some 
Strange Sun that flings his glory's sum 
In radiance around her there! 

His orbit's dark, but tongue is sweet 
And knows the lore of flattery's art : 

She trembles in her plane to meet 

The fond caresses of his greet. 

And gives for promises her heart ! 

But she as planet here is hung 

With an ecliptic that is known ; 
Herself defined by Gossip's tongue ; 
Her every fault and failing sung 

By every idle breath that's blown ! 



■^6 IN PASSING THROUGH. 



Still unknown may that lover be 
And black in heart as any Cain : 

In night Romance can better see 

Materials for its phantasy 

And dight aright its grotesque train. 

A sun is but a guess at best, 

A comet but a trail of light ; 
The one, as wearied, sinks to rest 
And leaves the heart sick in its quest ; 
The other scampers in the night! 

XXXIII. 

In lieu she learns of quibs and art, 

And practices a mild deceit ; 
And seeks to hide a w^anton heart, 
And tries to play a careless part 

With rank intent to fraud and cheat 

She nurses in her r . .u the thought 
That some hy^ jcrisy may win ; 
But oft in her own trap is caught 
And all he; v/iles conceived for naught, 
Or, \ orse. to steep her heart in sin. 

i\nd beauty, if by nature not, 

She seeks to paint upon her cheek, 
To friz it in her hair, or blot 
It somewhere in a " beauty-spot" — 
To make herself a blazoned freak ! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 37 

vShe fills a bad form out to <^ive 

Yon Hebe lines by tailor's art ; 
Slie ambles, p^r;ices. makes believe, 
And fondly smiles but to deceive — 

To plav v/ith man an equal part ! 

XXXIV. 

A little game in life we play 

In passincr through its fleeting span ; 

A little game, which, true to say. 

Is not just what we honor, nay, 

A game we play confounding man! 

A little game of lie to cheat 

A confidence new born of trust ; 
A little game for faith's defeat ; 
A game for mockery's repeat 

To prove sincerity accurst. 

Within a bragging age we find 

These caricatured tru.ths that show 

How little comes to man so !)iind 

He can not see the trend .aid wdnd 
Of Falsehood in a^;irs below ! 

And so v^■e stj.mble day by day 

To f..ll m snares Deceit has laid, 
And all because this vital clay 
Is wrong compounded and finds pay 

In folly through the Devil's trade. 



3S IN PASSING THROUGH 

XXXV. 

A little game of love to lead 

Some trusting heart into a snare , 
A little game of hate to feed 
The venom rankling in the seed 
Of life that blossoms in despair : 

A little more, of falsehood then 
To fill the social state of man 
And leave his soul as dark as when 
It crouched within its savage den 
Unconscious of its broader span. 



The instinct of the brute is still 
The moral guide of not a few, 

And uncontrolled the savage will, 

And bent to selfishness until 

The lair's ethics homes imbrue! 

We blush to see the smirking lie 

Take full command of heart's control 

We weep to see man's honor die ; 

But what avails our tear or sigh 
If we debase the human soul? 

XXXVI. 

He is deceived who lets the eye 

Be judge alone of all the world : 
'Tis thus we oft mistake the Lie 
And call " an honest man" the sly 

Deceiver who would leave us churled. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 39 

Are we traduced by bluntness here, 

Or the pahiver of man's speech? 
The iriannered man v/e rightly fear 
l>ecause his conduct is not clear, 

Nor acts within thought's lazy reach. 

Far fairer is the rugged man 

Of uncouth speech and simple ways; 

Him and his methods we can scan ; 

His cruder conduct is the plan 
Of honesty that nauglit betrays. 

XXXVII. 

How profitless is all of this! 

We note it but to let it pass! 
We'd rather coax some thought of bliss 
Than think of life just as it is, 

For conscience to cry out, alas! 

'Tis part of life to live in dreams ; 

Build castles but to see them fall ; 
A pleasure is but what it seems. 
And he that dw^ells in fancy's realms 

Knows most of earthly bliss, withal. 

I've lived it through and comfort found 

In visions that I knew untrue : 
What did I care? I'd rather sound 
A pleasure false than feel the wound 

Of hope deferred I thought my due. 



40 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

It matters not what trend my thought 

Has taken in its wanton flight ; 
To me the image that is wrought 
Is instinct with my life and fraught 

With pleasure, though a passing light. 

XXX van. 

I've had bright visions of a home 

That I might sometime see or know ; 
Wherein I'd find a sweet welcome 
And place to rest, and cease to roam 
About the world with spirit sore : 

For mine was e'er a restless soul 

That battered 'gainst its narrow cage ; 
My thoughts would soar beyond control, 
Amid ethereal spheres would roll 
And boundless platitudes engage ! 

I've had bright dreams, I say : a fair 

And lonely cove 'mid wildest scene ; 
A cot upon a rugged square 
Of mountain ledge, all lone and bare 
Above and capped in glinting sheen, 

Below great fertile plains, a sea 
That rolls and swells in majesty, 

A silvery stream that ploughs the lea 

Meandering lazily to the sea 

To lose itself with murmuring sigh. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 4I 

'Tis here my restless soul would live 
With all the freedom of the lark ; 

Amid such grandeur Hope can give 

Each pleasure liberty and live 
Again as in the primal spark ! 

XXXIX. 

I've pictured so my home : I'd live 

'Mid balmy winds and babbling streams : 

I'd coax the birds their songs to give 

To hatmonize it all : I'd live 
Forever in my languid dreams! 

And what can fairer be than ihis.? 

Or what thing happier to plan 
Than dream-life full of happiness? 
A region of unbounded bliss 

Born of the wild conceit of man.^ 

For, should I pall, I'd merely try 

* The world again, and, sickened, soon 
To eyrie back my soul would fly 
As bird of wild unrest, to die 

Amidst the comforts of this boon. 

'Tis false to think one satisfied 

With what he has of earth ; his lot 
Is mean when he has once espied 
A fellow's, though to him untried - — 
'Tis fair because he knows it not ! 



4^ IN PASSING THROUGH 

The weary wanderer seeks a home ; 

And he beside the hearth-stone longs 
For pleasures of an idle roam : 
And so from cradle unto tomb 

Comes discontentment's hiring songs, 

XL. 

I stray alone to view the world, 

In silence seeking sympathy; 
Ensanguined so my hopes unfurl 
To temper spirit of the churl 

That dwells within my misery : 

And thought's conspiracy is dead, 
And treason in the soul unknown ; 

And my unrest is vanquished, fled 

Beyond the pale of that it fed. 
To leave me undisturbed, alone. 

And so I revel in the sights 

Fair nature stretches out to view ; 

I people space and see delights 

In idle fellowships with wights 
Unreal and to fancy due. 

And thus the dormant soul of man, 
Full of the cliarms of life, awakes 
And all the range of earth would scan 
To find a breadth of love to span 

The breach that Hell's distemper makes. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 43 

XLI. 

How beautiful the land and sea, 

And the soft glowing sky above; 
The lofty mountains and the lea 
That stretches forth to meet and be 

Horizon to the plains of Jove : 

How beautiful each life that glows 

To color everything in view ; 
How beautiful the blushing rose, 
And every flowering shrub that shows 

The vSpirit vvdiich doth all renew . 

How beautiful the peaceful day 

And the serenity of night ; 
How grand the storm that breaks its stay 
And thunders o'er the world away 

To wreck within its fury's might : 

E'en to the narrow range of man 
Bound to his lot by earthen gyves, 

Though humble be his lowly span, 

Yet of what grandeur is the plan 
Of everything for which he strives. 

How beautiful, how beautiful ; 

And yet how strangely, truly sad 
That man is here less dutiful 
Than any creature beautiful 

That makes or leaves the world so fflad I 



44 IN PASSING TIIFIOUGH. 

Yea, true, 'tis man alone's deformed, 

And he that mars the face of earth ; 
And he that tortures and is harmed 
By his own craft, and yet is armed 
For the destruction of all worth ! 

He builds and he destroys. He plays 

With dangerous tools and thinks his deeds 

Are wise ; and in this he displays 

Noetic brain, perhaps, but \vays 
In strange adjustment to his needs. 

XLU. 

But when beneath the arching skies 

In lonely solitude we roam, 
We this fotget and let our eyes 
Pursue the fleecy cloud that flies 

Within the heaven's azure dome. 

Could we but live within that mass 

And hie us in its billowy folds. 
The earth and all its rue might pass, 
No stricken soul to cry, alas! 

Because of Nature's bites and scolds. 

We'd drink the harmony of sound ; 

We'd listen to the lisping wind ; 
We'd free ourselves of all that bound ; 
We'd feel no earthly jar or wound, 

Nor binding cord that once confined ! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 45 

We'd be of truest likeness then 

To that we boast, our image is, 
Or as the Soul in nature when 
Its pristine essence is again 

Resumed to be dissolved in bliss. 

XLIII. 

To be alone is company, 

As Greek philosophy once said ; 
And solitude can sometimes be 
Amid the gayest company 

If hearts to sober thoughts are wed. 

I needed not this apothegm 

To tell me of a mind's unrest ; 
I've felt it, and I've tried to stem 
My scurring thoughts, or hinder them 

From bringing on a vexing quest. 

I drift myself into tlie sea 

Of troubles that I would avoid ; 
I flounder, and my buoyancy 
Is sunk by scorn and mockery. 

And all life's pleasures are alloyed ! 

XhlV. 

But still in solitude is charm 

More subtle than the poets say ; 
For what know they of hearts' alarm? 
Or measure of each damning harm 

This solitude can soothe away? 



4^ IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Instinct with dream they only see 
The visions of their ardor born ; 

The creatures of wild phantasy ; 

The eidolons that can not be, 

Or things of strange Athenic spawn ; 

\Vhilst we, beset with mundane toil 
And struggling in our narrow bounds. 

Can feel more keenly life's turmoil, 

Embitterment we can not foil, 
To writhe in agony of wounds! 

Because we can not speak as they 
In wild and rhythmic rapsody, 

Is it the proof of brighter way.? 

Or that we stumble in our lay, 
Too full of pain for harmony? 

The deepest grief is dumb of tongue 

And silent is the throb of death, 
The pang that has in anguish wrung 
Was, never to sweet music sung, 

For gasping in its speech and breath, 

XLV 

But vSolitude, O Solitude! 

How sweet to lie and dream with thee! 
How gracious is thy voiceless mood. 
Thy desert stillness, or the rude, 

Fierce roarinjx breakers of the sea ! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 47 

For whether in the plain or wood. 

The mountain or the ocean's cahii, 
The heart has ever understood 
The language of thy pensive flood' 

That soothes to rest its wild alarm. 

Oppressed with grief to thee would turn 

Each soul for sympathy and rest ; 
For thou wast never known to spurn 
A spirit that could here once yearn 

For that with w^hich thou art so blest. 

XLVI. 

I lo.ve the coves of solitude ; 

I love the silent dells and wood ; 
I love the mountain and the rude 
Waves of the beach, their amplitude, 

And the w^ild dashings of their flood. 

I watch the ocean waves and say, 

Thalassa of wild billows, roll ! 
Within thy froth fair Nereids play. 
And Oceanides there spray 

The rainbow of thy wrath's control : 

Upon thy bosom ploughs the fleet 

Of man in "golden argosies" ; 
And silver though thy shining sheet, 
A slave art thou to traffic feet — 

Leviathan of human prize ! 



4S IN PASSING TI-IROUGH. 

And Neptune or Poseidon eld, 

With trident pricks thy liquid heart. 

And leaping dolphins, too, would swell 

Their reign, or Nautilus compel 
Thee bear aloft her tiny yacht : 

Thou kissest shores remote and near, 

Thou liquid bridge of distant lands!. 
Thou billow of a Pluvian tear 
That fell to w^ater earth when sere, 

And here remained for Life's commands! 

We play within thy drifting sands, 

We chase thy tides and ride thy waves ; 
We compass thee within our lands, 
And dare abuse thy law's commands 

Though yawning are thy swirling graves. 

O peaceful Stream that Nereus mild 
Was want to govern in thy flow. 

Is power in thee fierce and wnld. 

Here docile as obedient child 
But to. deceive the spirit so? 

Yea, Proteus is thy god as well, 
And changeable art thou as he ! 

'I hy gentle undulating swell 

May burst to wreck when none can tell 
What cargos sunk and what at sea! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 49 

XLVII. 

Thy name, O Ocean, sounds of fame! 

Great Homer wound thee 'round the earth ; 
Gave thee fair Tethys as thy dame, 
And fairer offspring of thy name : 

And all pronounced thee full of worth. 

"Thalassa" by the Grecian host, 

"Thalatta" in the Attic tongue, 
As waves of thee dashed on the coast 
To wreck the things of human boast — 

Of thee onomatope they sung! 

But what name fitting to the wail 

That comes with all th}^ storm and roar? 
When in thy seething floods the Sail 
Sinks 'neath the billows of thy gale 

That hurl strange fragments on the shore? 

XLVIII. 
I dreamed of thee and thought I savv' 

A Demon sleeping on thy breast : 
A Being wraught of nature's flaw, 
A hideous Shape defying law% — 

Huge, stretching north and south and west. 

His breathing shook thy treacherous calm 
And jarred the pendant heavens high ; 
And when he moved all felt alarm, 
And waves sprang up as though a harm * 
Was in their sleeping so near by! 



50 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

A sail flew o'er the sea and woke 

This monster of the raging deep : 
A flashing eye, a lightning stroke. 
And thundering billows leaped and broke, 
The frail thing with one fell sweep! 

And mocking winds hurled fragments high, 

And drifts w^ere broken on the shore, 
And sea-gulls answered human cry, 
And storms, deriding, passed on by, 
And sunk debris forever more! — 

Thou baffling oceanic Stream, 

Awake not thoughts of storm and rage : 
Thou now art calm, so let me dream 
Of thee as some smooth, flowing stream 

As in the fair archaic age. 

XLIX. 

From birth to death this life is change. 
New scenes to dawn with every day ; 
Time's fleeting image sure can range 
From hour to hour although each strange 
Emotion halts as if to stay : 

To-day our hearts are filled with joy, 

To-morrow sorrow ekes the hour ; 
And next some pleasure would decoy, 
Or drown the troubles that annoy — ■ 

And we the playthings of some Power! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 

The flying fronds, or siftino- sand, 
That drift on winds of Destiny ; 

The huddled leaves upon the land 

Obeying fatuous command 

And swirling till we lifeless lie! 

L. 

We light upon a certain place 
And for a season call it home ; 

We leave for each remembered face 

To linger in its wonted grace, 

So plaguing thence our aimless roam ! 

Like birds of passage in their flight. 

We come and go 'mid tempests swell ; 
Our greeting but a passing light 
That lends a radiance for the Night 

To snuff and give us back " farewell " ! 

And friends forget and deem us dead — 
For Absence is Oblivion's host ! 

And dreams that were are quickly fled 

For newer ties to bind instead 

And leave the heart an empty boast ! 

LI. 
I've seen a little bird uncaged 

That fluttered 'round its prison home : 
Uncertain freedom so engaged 
Its hope and fear — and so have waged 

Emotion's battles when I roam ! 



52 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

A prison is in Freedom's wild 

Where boundless vistas hove in view ; 
For vastness renders impulse mild ; 
Each soaring thought is natures child; 

A home, a joy, is still life's due. 

Unsatisfied we strive in vain 

To find some peace and place of rest ; 
'Tis not in snapping friendship's chain 
To wander o'er earth's lonely main 

Companionless that we are blest. 

LII. 

In solitude the charm we find 

Is living o'er our lives again ; 
Regaling thought in memory's wind, 
Allowing love-hopes so to bind 

All pleasures we would have remain : 

See with a different light and eye 
Life's incidents so near forgot ; 

Recall the times for which we sigh ; 

Hear songs of joy that drown the cry 
Wailed by the waif of hapless lot. 

But solitude and I have dwelt 

Within this clay for, lo, so long! 
I know his mood and he has felt 
The gloom in me ; and such is pelt 
To spirit that gives forth this song. 



IN PASSING THROUGH, 



LIII 



53 



" Farewell !" I say to dreams each day : 

Farewell to scenes and friends I've known ; 

' ' Farewell ! " and in my feeble way 

I try express the throbs that say 

"Farewell" with depths to words unknown! 

And yet I'm only half expressed 

And misinterpreted and feared, 
And all my heart has e'er confessed 
Was disbelieved, or deemed the test 

Of baseness that the cynic stirred! 

Yet still I turn to say " farewell " 

Though doubt may mock sincerity ; 
I can not, will not, break the spell 
That binds the past ; I hence would dwell 
In realms of cherished memory. 

LIV. 

I love to hold a memory sweet, 

I love to dream of pleasures past ; 
1 love for pictures to repeat 
Conceptions to old Time's defeat 

And stamp impressions that will last : 

I cherish them and, miser like, 

Would gloat o'er their possession aye; * 

I hoard each vision that can strike 
The sympathetic chord I like 

To sound its melody each day : 



54 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

And so within safe keeping I 

Hold much the world may deem as dross, 
And with love's tenderness and eye, 
I touch, and see, and, loving, sigh 

For what may better be my loss ! 

LV. 

The pictures I have laid away 
Are not Daguerreotypes of art ; 

Nor chiseled in some -wasting clay ; 

But photographed by finer ray 
On sensor-tablets of my heart. 

No magic sibyl ever held 

Had half the power of these to bring 
The joys back that once compelled 
The heart to worship, or that swelled 

The overflow of youth's bright spring. 

I live again the moments through 

As though no day had spaced my love ; 

I feel a fellowship as true 

As any that life ever knew — 

Though answering spirit may not move. 

Enough it is to feel the bliss 

And know the dream is ever young ; 
That Toil and x\ge the brow rriay kiss. 
But naught can prove the heart remiss 
That holds an image Fancy sprung. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 55 



LVI 



In train a myriad visions stand 

Like sylphs in fairy-land of dream ; 

Each holds a love at its command ; 

Each waves submission by its hand ; 
Each is, though it may only seem ! 

It is, for by its subtle power 

It frees oppression of my thought, 
And, in the transport of its hour. 
It sweeps the soul with magic power 
To purge it of what frenzy wrought. 

LVII. 

My school-day's love I can't deny, 

Nor how my sentiments w^ould fliow 
When under trees I used to lie 
And dream the future o'er and sigh 
For that I never was to know. 

For, school-days done, I drifted on 
To other scenes and other loves, 
For them in turn to leave upon 
My mind impressions that will run 
To end of memory's sportive roves. 

Though sweetheart of my boyhood days 

Could scarcely move affections now, 
I can not yet forget her ways, 
Or here deny that she still plays 

The wanton with my heart, somehow ! 



56 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

LVIII. 

I see. a maid bare-footed, tanned. 

But beauty in both form and face ; 
She trips across the new plowed land 
While from her small and sun-burnt hand, 
She drops the grain where furrows lace : 

Her eyes are bright with youthful fire. 
Her hair with sunlight frolic mad, 

Her step is agile and desire 

Would burn her cheeks when eyes admire 
The rounded limbs so scantly clad. 

She is to me a mountain fay ! 

A wandering Knight I am to her! 
A sweet romance with each would play — 
I hold the vision, but the day 

Is past to leave me but its cheer ! 

LIX 

I see a lady proud and grand. 

With beauty that transcends a star ; 

She greets and smiles : I lose command 

Of heart and will, and, trembling, stand 

A suppliant pleading at love's bar ! 

She leads me hither, thither, ways 

I dare not here confess because 
'Twould show how weak the strongest stays 
We boast ! The misanthrope obeys 

The promptings of some social laws ! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 



?/ 



The real passes and the dream 

Is all I have to mark the day. 
I only know what love did seem ; 
I would not shatter fancy's realm 

By searching deeper in the play. 

LX. 

So seasons bring their gifts, and pain 
Of parting ere true friendship's ripe : 

Blue eyes or brown, in happv train 

Flash on my life to leave again, 
And I retain a passing type ! 

I care not? Yes; though knowledge sees 
All semblance of the real destroyed ! 

I'd rather pass my life with these 

And feel their warmth than know the freeze 
That chills the hopes of all enjoyed. 

'Twill vanish soon enough although 
We hold each shadow as divine : 

The truth contains much human woe : 

We can not always see the glow 
Of life when suffering in its pine. 

LXI. 
On moieties we live and thrive, 

On shadows base our love and faith ; 
We hope and dream and ever strive 
To keep our feeble flanie alive 

Though aimless as a shadow- wraith. 



SS IN PASSING THROUGH. 

And these with recollections vain 
Wove in the fabric of each life, 
Defy Arachne's art again 
To show the world a gayer train 
Spun of her wild and fabled strife. 

'Tis dreaming thus that poets find 
The fair creations of their verse, 

And let their brooding thoughts combine 

In rhythmic cadences divine 

The treasures of the mental purse. 

And so we know, in sober truth, 
The creature of each frenzied mind 

Is one in fancy bred ; insooth, 

An apparition of the Truth 

That longings of the heart would bind 

And that it isn't half so fair 

As phantasy would make believe ; 
But seen within the light of care, 
We find its virtues strangely rare — 
For 'tis Love's province to deceive! 

As some one has so aptly said, 

The most adorable is she 
Whom we have never met, nor wed 
To fickle thought to turn the head 

A moment from reality. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 59 

The wise will always love and sigh ; 

The foolish only live in bliss! 
When buoyant hopes would soar too high 
Reflection shows the sham and lie 

That are one half of all that is ! 

LXII. 

How happy must the yeoman be 
Amid his fields and feeding flocks, 

Where nature's rare simplicity 

Is mirrowed in the sky and lea. 
And even ruggedness of rocks. 

No passions stir his bosom's calm. 

Fraught of the wrangle of his kind ; 
He views the world without alarm; 
Sees pleasures in each sylvan charm, 

And happiness wnth all combined : 

He plows his lands, he sows his grain, 

And reaps a harvest for his toil ; 
He tends his herds upon the plain ; 
Or drives the jolly, rumbling wain 

For products of the fertile soil : 

His cares are as the springtime cloud — 

A passing shadow and no more : 
An ill the sunshine has allowed 
To sweep his soul ; a shifting cloud 

That drops a tear in flitting so ! 



6o * IN PASSING THROUGH. 



His prancing steeds, his lowing kine 

That feed within the meadows green, 
His h^rnbs agambol and the swine 
That bask within the warm sunshine 
So rendering picturesque the scene ; 

The chirping birds, the chanticleer 

That crows its freedom to the soul ; 
The swans afloat on silver mere, 
The plough-boy's happy song of cheer — 
These are the joys of his control. 

The morning finds him up and out 

With sunlight and the sparkling dew ; 

Fresh nature's glowing air about 

Invigorating life to rout 

The ills that languidness would brew^ ; 

At noon the blast of horn recalls 
The passing day and nature's need; 

Within the shade of trees he sprawls, 

And drowsily his mind recalls 

Each season's wanno wings of seed. 

At eve when sun is sinking red. 

He wends him home in tuneful joy ; 
At night he seeks his humble bed. 
No thoughts tormenting heart or head, 
And sleeps to dream of love's employ. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 6l 



LXIII. 



Contrast with this the city life 

With all its bustle and its roar; 
Its howling greed, its angry strife 
That tramples down each feeble life 
Which vainly struggles to the fore ; 

Its brawling crime and snarling death ; 

Its cries of want and wild despairs; 
Its dust and smoke which stifle breath ; 
Its foul effluvia of death ; 

Its catacombs of human lairs ; 

Its seed of whirlwind, crop of tares; 

Its hells of woe, its devils' care; 
Its folly-shops of sham-faced wares ; 
Its tolls, its panders and its snares — 

And these are what w^e can compare ! 

Miasmas fill its alley ways, 

And Want is fellow of the hour; 
And Life a Life to ills betrays, 
And with Contagion foully plays 
For Death, the unrelenting Powder : 

And some inventive Genius springs 

A trap for Riches to ascend ; 
A trap that to the many brings 
A fall and downward slope of things 
By making much on one depend : 



62 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

The lazzaroni of the street 

Are mocks of sympathy and wealth ; 
And Opulence, with noisy feet, 
Would drown the cries which might repeat 

The tales told of its adroit stealth ! 

How much was robbed and how much earned 

By honest labor of the hand? 
How much had better nature spurned _ 
The methods of increase which turned 

" An honest penny's " base command? 

LXIV. 

And yet the Youth on entering life 

Is taught that power waits on wealth ; 

Not that pursuit brings weary strife, 

Possession sodidness of life 

And pains attending wasted health. 

He's driven into business cares 

That bow his head, corrupt his heart ; 

And promised but a goal that fears 

Its exaltation and the sneers 

Of those who know its crafty art ; 

The art that Honesty disdains 

As stepping stone of Fraud and Lie ; 

The art that Artifice maintains 

And never purpose base restrains 
Though end be in a fellow's cry. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 63 

And so the fairest mark of pride 

Is graven on a gilded shaft 
That tells how sympathy has died 
And better purpose been denied 

For base devices of a craft ! 

LXV. 

The greatest curse of man to-day 

Is love of gold and its pursuit ; 
The littleness that holds the sv^^ay 
Of wills within their wily play, 

To leave conditions of the brute ! 

I hold it that a heart when set 

On this pale drudge of avarice. 
Is prone to any crime abet 
Which clears the way or helps to let 

An object pass for its increase : 

And from the first when cattle meant 

Pecunia of ancestral trade, 
The pecus stood for vile intent 
To seize, and hold aggrandizement 

The aim of every barter made : 

And even now when man would boast 

Enlightenment and moral e3^e, 
His traffic is the same in cost 
As that which moved the barbarous host ; 

His betterment a vanity ! 



^4 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

LXVI. 

Young Hermes, Grecian god of Trade, 

Was god as well of Theft and Lie ; 
'S tho' theft and lie the traffic made. 
Or barter little truth displayed, 
Or honor showed within its ply! 

This god was likewise god of Speech ; 

Inventive source of Cadmean sign! 
Speech for the wily tongue to teach 
The will to make a moral breech 

That promised profit by its whine! 

What wonder then a custom born 
Of such a source should find an end 

In that alone which foster scorn. 

Which teaches mankind how to fawn 
To Powers that on wealth depend.^ 

LXVIL 

It is a trait of humankind — 

Born with us in the savage state — 
To entertain a grasping mind 
That hopes in someway here to find 
The treasures it doth meditate. 

Mistaken are we all and blind 

To truths of life as time will show; 
The good of that we hope to find 
Is lost within the maze and wind 
Of byways Greed entangles so. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 6^ 

Wealth is not sum of happiness, 

Nor power measure of desire, 
Nor worldly splendor all of bliss, 
Nor charm of all in what we miss. 

Nor love alone in sensual fire ; 

Some spice must season everything 

And render palatable sweets 
Which cloy in surfeit ; so to bring 
The human taste to earthly thing 

And clear the mind of its conceits. 

LXVIII. 

Return again unto the scene 

Of rural innocence and peace : 
If soul be weary touch the green, 
Antaeus-like, it w'ill be seen 

To strengthen with the earth's increase! 

We all were woodland fauns, perhaps, 
Before we yoked ourselves as men ; 

Before we forged deceitful traps 

For human frailties and mishaps, 
Or tempted dolts in social pen. 

Before we fettered docile wills 

To labor in our selfish use ; 
Before we knew inventive skills. 
Or dreamed of subjugating wills . 

To their betrayal and abuse. 



66 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

We boast of freedom, to enslave 

Each helpless thing that comes in way! 
Un manumitted souls but crave 
The freedom God to others gave — 

Enslaved themselves by passion's sway. 

We fetter selves and teach our hands 

To forge the fetters of our dupes ; 
A pfaoler-den we make all lands, 
And proudly strut and give commands, 

And brag of dumb-voiced, servile, troops! 

LXIX. 

Yea, freedom is in being free 

To make a hell of all the world, 
And letting human avarice be 
The master passion, and the plea 
Of all the baseness of the churl ! 

And fairness is in being fair 

When power is to here restrain ; 
Or, 'tis in taking major share 
Of everything for which we care 
When no one dares bid us refrain ! 

And justice is the thing we boast 

When we have neither want nor will 

To gratify, and all the cost 

Is borne by others, or is lost 

In test of some one's poorer skill. 



IN PASSING THROUGH, 67 



LXX. 



]3orn free we are : Equality 

Is not a thing of birth, but worth. 

'Tis stuff that makes the man ; degree 

Of elements arranged to be 

Perchance a power on the earth. 

Some move this way and some move that- 

These children in their passions blind. 
Those as though some divine fiat 
Predestined them to conquer that 

Which blocks the way of dull mankind. 

By prejudice and passion moved 

The vast majority of men : 
Throw off restraint and it is proved 
All are but creatures it behooved 

The wiser to restrain and pen ! 

Anarchial in both thought and mood, 

Destructive and of social flaw ; 
Some Reason has to stir and brood, 
Devise a means and rule of good 
And force the regnancv of law ! 



LXXI. 

We've mocked the nature love confest ; 

We've scorned the pristine chatm and sway; 
We've filled our souls with fierce contest 
To baffle all the dreams of rest ; 

We're authors of our own dismay : 



68 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

We're moved to purpose and design 
The god-like in us must deplore ; 

We've set a gait and marked a sign 

That generations may repine 

In reaping what our errors sow : 

And social state that promised peace 

In plea for strength which it combined, 
Has turned the force for ills increase, 
Or for Contention's greater lease 
In bring-iiiP- strutjp-les on mankind. 

LXXII. 

So Aristotle's postulate 

That man was born a citizen, 

Is called in question here of late, 

And, by new canons of debate, 
He's found the creature of a den ! 

And if a polites at all, 

A ramping, howling, "diplomat" 
Whose social state is one of gall, 
The "citizen," "political;" — 

Transforming polites to that ! 

Was ever word so misconstrued, 

Or misinterpreted by use? 
A term of fellowship for feud! 
A word whose meaning would include 

Within itself its own abuse! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 69 

We find, indeed, the " citizen," 

Instead of being neighbor true, 
Is oftener a partizan 
Whose business is to cheat, and plan 

The robbing of another's due ; 

And that his " patriotism " is 

What surly Johnson would define : 

A scoundrel's apt lip-word in his 

Defense of his own act remiss, 
Or the disguise of his design. 

Yet " politics " is still the cant 

Of those who prate of polity ; 
Of demagogue and sycophant, 
And " statesmen " far more ignorant 

Of statecraft than diplomacy ! 

LXXIII. 

'Tis plain that if we view mankind 

In any light our reason knows, 
A tugging, fudging, mass we find 
Of divers aims, and, passion blind. 

Each holding all the rest as foes ! 

In toils of rancor, din of sound, 

Most labors seem but to estrange ; 
Yet each is stung by selfish wound. 
Which shows that all are linked and bound 
By some concatenation strange. 



JO IN PASSING THROUGH. 

LXXIV. 

Society, Society, 

To what condition is thy name? 
Once stood the term for God's decree 
Spoke to the soul's affinity 

That it wild impulses might tame. 

From primal germ of savage state 

Art thou advanced or lower borne? 
Thy wisdom hoideth yet debate 
With some instincts that here relate 
Thee to a former plain of scorn. 

And baser ends thy humors crave 

Than Troglodytes conceived withal ; 
For in the more exalted " cave " 
That union built, thy freedom gave 
A license for thy social thrall! 

Now man is moved by thy decrees, 
And virtue loses through thy claims, 

Whilst Wealth holds greatest power to please, 

And Sham enjoys fullest ease — 
The tenor of thy vaunted aims ! 

And is this what was promised \vhen 
All gave their aid to help thee bind 

The social tie that was to pen 

The wild community of men 

Into the noble caste " Mankind "? 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 



LXXV. 



Society, Society, 

What dignity canst thou confer? 
The state of nature, wild and free, 
Is dignity to what we see 

Exampled in thy social leer. 

The man who once found pride in truth, 

And scorned dissemblings of the lie, 
Is now seduced, and from his youth 
Is taught the lesson of thy ruth — 
Himself deceived to falsify ! 

We speak of savage red-man found 

Within this land which we call ours; 
We let not honest truth confound 
Our pride by telling how we hound'd 
A truer nature by our powers. 

He brought a calmuet of peace ; 

A faith conceiving us divine ! 
We, " fire-water " to increase 
His ills; a " forked-tongue's " release 

In proof of our " benign " design ! 

His Manitou we soon despised, 

And forced a faith beyond his ken ; 
We haggled and deceived, devised 
New tortures for his hurt, reprised 
His lands and slew his people, then — 



73 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Our mission was of love, we say ! 

Our faith a civilizing force! 
The savage is our helpless prey ; 
Evangelizing him we may 

Enlighten so the world — of course! 

Teach him the morals sprung of lie ! 

The virtue of hypocrisy ! 
The love of profit, and the sigh 
Born of our selfishness; the cry 

Of clamorous frivolity. 

LXXVI. 

Society ! Society ! 

When earth was young and man was new, 
His soul knew no obscurity ; 
His lowly intellect was free 

Of Speculation's wise ado. 

No drearning Nous pronounced him damn'd 

Because of goblins in his mind ; 
No mystic microcosm spann'd 
Hiatus of a god's command 

To find a Hell if he was blind I 

His dream was real, his pleasures sweet, 

Untrubled by a code of ill ; 
He paired as birds pair, his retreat 
Was home and full of all things meet 

For simple happiness of will. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 73 

Was Rome more happy than wild Gaul 
Whose peoples lived in huts of straw? 

She rolled in wealth and vice, withal, 

But could not e'en so much as call 
Her soul her own by will or law ! 

Peace hung upon a tyrant's smile ; 

It trembled at his passing nod ; 
And virtue was a thing of guile, 
Dcfloured for an idle while 

As though a luckless gift of God! 

The shrineless gods of German host 

Dealt fairer with their devotees : 
No chambered temples could they boast, 
Nor altars smoking with lamb's roast, 

But virtue dwelt among the trees. 

The dames of lusty warriors sprung 

Like Spartan matrons to the fight ; 
They helped the lordly arm and sung 
Encouragement, and, chastely clung 
To all that was in honor right. 

They bartered not themselves nor gave 
Their lieges any cause for shame : 

Their duties were to tend and save. 

In battles fierce, the fallen brave, 
Or keep alive his honored name. 



74 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Well might a Tacitus cry out, 

Comparing them to sensual drones 
Of Romish ease, whose silly pout 
Was love's device, a ruse for lout, 
A voice inveigling in its tones! 

LXXVII. 

Society, Society, 

Art thou advanced on Gothic creeds? 
Ah, Jezebels are born of thee. 
And Sensuality is free 

To mark thy progress with its deeds! 

The savage virtues are debased 
For social Sybarites to reign, 

And style of Artemis defaced, 

Or by Astarte now replaced 
For base Propoetic love again. 

An age that brags of chivalry 

And equal rights to either sex. 
Decadence shows in parity. 
And not the progress faith would see 
Wraught by the social part's contex ! 

Disdain for manly qualities 

Marks everything efFenimate ; 
A languor born of wanton ease 
Is humor w^hich perhaps may please 
A feeble mind's more feeble state. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 75 

LXXVIII. 

Society, Society, 

Who forced on woman sin and shame, 
And filled her head with vanity. 
And taught her inutility 

In that for which she bears the blame? 

Thy fashions wrecked a graceful form 
And hugged diseases in their grip; 

Thy arts to maiden's blush did harm ; 

Thy manners lost her simple charm 
And stole the truth from eye and lip ! 

She ogles and denies, and plays 

The hoiden to a soubrette's taste; 
And by false acts the heart betrays 
That beats for her, and breaks the stays 
That bind the sacred married state ! 

As Rousseau charged of old, she gives 

Her babe into a nurse's care ; 
Disports herself, and, if it lives, 
A fine example then she gives 

Of how the meretricious fare! 

LXXIX. 

Society ! Society ! 

In lieu of consort that proclaims 
Our sires' superiority, 
We hold concupiscence is free 

To here embrace its sensual aims ! 



76 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

Conjugal state is social woe : 

The bachelor and " bachelor-maid," 

Are evolutions come before 

The Freeloveism we may know 
When lawful wedlock is delayed. 

Delayed to let the passions sway 

The will to fancies of an hour; 
Delayed to let hot lust betray 
The head and turn its thoughts away 

From sequence of a venal power. 

And this we call Advancement now : 
This low incontinance and lust ! 

And acts untoward we allow, 

While vain imaginings somehow 

Prove false to each misguided trust. 

Great Shakespeare truly understoo~d 

These little weaknesses of man ; 
His imp of satire wisely could 
Discern each temperment of good, 
And see each crafty devil's plan. 

'Tis no less true of ages past 

Than of the present which we see ; 

And what Puck said will ever last 

Man's verdant vanity to blast, 

With, " O what fools these mortals be " ! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 77 

LXXX. 

Society ! Society ! 

To quibble, jest, with idle tongue, 
And show a mental vacancy. 
Is all the lesson learned of thee 

To soothe the pang of conscience rung 

By thy decrees and wilful acts 

Which license mischief in mankind ; 

The soul conceives of what it lacks 

By thy disparagement of facts. 
And by thy feebleness of mind. 

From youth to manhood's eager prime 
The passions are within thy school, 

And modesty is deemed a crime 

That dims the luster of the time. 
Since frolic is the sanctioned rule : 

And early in the day is taught 

Thy light frivolity of will. 
And spirit of presumption caught. 
And act of indescretion's thought 

That moves but to accomplish ill. 

LXXXI. 

Society, Society, 

Where rest the faults of thy estate? 
Who turned the social impulse free 
And taught it how to wreck and be 

A farce for empty fools' debate? 



yS IN PASSING THROUGH.. 

'Tis not so easy to undo 

An error as to teach a vice : 
A thought deep-rooted is as true 
To him who holds it as the due 
Of any act or sage advice. 

Who then will stand for vicious deed, 
Disgrace and social turpitude? 

Society hath sown the seed, 

Society will reap the weed 

Grown in its own base servitude! 

LXXXII. 

What gilded halls of wreck and sin 

Wherein the flowing bowl is passed. 
And where the die is cast to win 
Or lose the fortunes chanced within 
That wiser moments have amassed ; 

What clinking glasses of champagne 

And wines of amber or of red. 
Or siren glances which contain 
The ravishment and social bane 
For carnal youth of giddy head ; 

So is the ball-room of the gay 
To debutantes in la heau-monde. 

When peaceful night is changed to day 

And Sensuality has play 

Of passions in their fitful round. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 79 



LXXXIII. 



I catch a glimpse of passing show ; 

I see a throng decollete; 
And by the grand parade I know 
Terpsichore doth rule below, 

And these are signs of her rapt sway. 

The flush of youth dyes cheek and brow, 

And aided has the hand of art ; 
Soft eyes here blaze as though somehow 
Their liquid depths caught fire and now 
Give light to show their passion's heart 

And robbed the rainbow is of hues 
To drape these butterflies of Night ; 

And naught resplendant doth refuse 

To add a luster for the use 

Of Beauty in her brilliant dight ! 

LXXXIV. 

The gayest of the gay are here ; 

The simple in their giddy plight ; 
The shallowest of the sham appear 
Commingling with the brilliant near, 

And liberty doth give delight ! 

lilyes promise much and preasures more, 

And languidness entices love ; 
The pulsing heart now quickens flow 
Of passion but to crimson snow 

Of bosoms throbbing dreams of love : 



8o 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 



And then, as vines entwined, they wind 

Their satyr-sylph-like arms around, 
As tendrils so to hold and bind 
In union here these polar kind. 

Magnetic by the touch and sound ! 

And, drunk with passion's melody, 

They move with love's voluptuousness, 

And swell with billows of the sea 

That rolls within in mutiny 

To wiser thoughts of soberness! 

They glide as things unreal, insooth, 

Like wild Gyrini On a pool ; 
They reel and skirt in very truth 
Like lambs agambol full of youth. 

Or madcaps on the eve of Yule. 

LXXXV. 

If waltz delight you, whirl ye on : 

The scene will change to find you lo\v 
Of all the plain ye stood upon 
Irradiant when your life begun — 
And ye will never find it more ! 

Youth will be past and blushes gone — 
No rouge to bring them back to life ! 

And honor ^vill be trampled on, 

And virtue of its merit shorn 

By midnight revels and love's strife ! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 8l 

And barriers down which held apart 

Wild passions that should feel restraint. 

Will open way to lusttul heart 

For lecherous charm to play its part 
And leave the soul a lasting taint! 

LXXXVI. 

The Dervish has his day and falls : 

Ye with your dance of less excuse, 
Arouse a nature that recalls 
The social curse — though such befalls 
One sex alone in its abuse ! 

Man's jealousy doth urge on man 

The purity of wife and maid ; 
For what is chaste he lays his plan, 
And to obtain her so he can 

By spurning here the fallen jade. 

He states his wants ; he makes demand, 

And, howsoever low himself. 
His manhood still will tirmly stand 
And call for virtue though he plann'd 

The downfall of the sex itself! 

But woman on her part doth yield 
To question not what she receives! 

And this is her great moral wield ! 

And this is how her virtues shield ! 
She falls but ssldom self retrieves! 



82 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

LXXXVIl. 

Her innate wish may be as wild 

As any act that man can do ; 
Her moral nature undefiled 
Because by custom she's the child 
Of man's selection and his rue. 

She has no scruples as the man 

In the selection ot her mate ; 
If she but love the flame she'll fan 
Although it be for vilest man 

Found in the most degraded state ! 

LXXXVIII. 

To thus contrast the sexes we 

See much that seems not just or right ; 
The man inordinately free, 
The woman lost to all if she 

But once embrace a social blight : 

And yet the man can soon forget ; 

For all the world is his engross : 
While woman in her sphere must fret 
And suffer martyrdom, and yet 

Be comfort to some man, of course ! 

The fault is Nature's, but the creed 

Is writ in language as divine 
As oracle which places deed 
Of patience far above the seed 
Of man that evils here incline. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 83 



LXXXIX, 

A woman's love or hate is spring 

That moves her hands to any deed ; 
In love her heart defies the fling. 
Or Fate's or Fortune's sharpest sting: 
She hides her wounds to let them bleed ! 

A creature of divinest love 

Whose soul with fondness overflows, 
And sympathy of God above 
Stands not superior, nor His love. 

Than glows the spark her bosorri knows : 

A patient grace of tenderness ; 

A witch of passion that's divine ; 
A nurse to all the ills that press ; 
A cherub of sweet blessedness 

Consoling all who may repine : 

She glides an angel on this earth ; 

She stands for that faith would proclaim 
She gives to blessing lives their birth, 
So proving mother of all worth 

And sweet almoner of love's aim. 

xc. 

But woman's hate is that degree 
Of hell as that her love is bliss ! 

When scorned, neglected, then can she 

Unburden spleen and so set free 
The rancor of a Nemesis ! 



84 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Hell holds no depth she can't explore 

To fetch an ill to torture life ; 
Medusa-like her hate would glow 
To murder in its glance and show 

The venom of her nature's strife. 

She conjures ill and heaps her scorn 

With spirit that a Harpy loved ; 
She'll give a Judas kiss and fawn, 
And e'en her sacred honor pawn 
To hide the vixen in her moved! 

XCL • 

But why expatiate on this? 

Why contrast man's or woman's wiles? 
W^hy pry to wreck our little bliss 
By proving natures are remiss 

In all except their selfish guiles? 

Is earth not full enougn of woe? 

Are hearts too free, or spirits light? 
Are dreams at fault because we know 
Ephem'ral is the feeble glow 

That lights a hope to mundane sight? 

Return to nature ; gaze around : 
Mark her vicissitudes and moods. 

Forget the fetters that are wound 

Confining us upon the ground 

As prey entangled in the woods : 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 85 

That Soul is free which yet can soar 

In fancy realms though body lies 
In dungeons cold and bare ; and more, 
That Soul is free which tunes the roar 

Of Death to anthems of the skies! 

XCII. 

I feel a humid breath of air; 

I see a slumberous, lazy, haze ; 
I note the heaven's darkening care, 
And thistledown on languorous air 

Come floating in the sultry rays ; 

I hear the droning of a bee 

That drifts upon the swelling wind ; 
I catch a muffled song of glee 
That bursts from throats I can not see, 
And birds hie to their fellow-kind ; 

I catch a bay from yonder wold 

That tells a tale of sore distress, 
And bleats and bellows from some fold 
Are lowly sounds which speak the scold 

Of higher Powers that repress : 

The perfumes of some ladened bloom 

Make rendolent the drowsy air : 
Alack ! the scene is one of gloom ; 
The sounds are knellings of the doom 

That comes engulfing heie the fair! 



86 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

XCIII, 

The strato-mist we called a haze 

Has swelled to cumuli of storm, 
And all the heavens are ablaze 
With flashes of the lightning's rays 

That zigzag in their anger's form : 

Like demons roused to wrath and hate, 
Fire Jotuns leap from cloud to cloud. 
And play as though aerial state 
Was home of some wild, wrathful, Fate 
That grinned to give the earth its shroud ! 

Or Gnomes that snatch at fleeting prey 
And such pursue : so seem the arms 

Flashed from dark folds ; each grasping ray 

More fearful by its scorching play 

That spreads to strike e'en while it charms! 

And presently there comes the roar 
Of Winds let loose to howl apace : 

They drive the raging Storm before 

To wreck as some base living foe 
That glories in a wanton chase . 

And thunder is the chuckling laugh 
Of this old demon we call Storm ! 
The flash his smile, the rod his staff, 
The Winds his charges ; the riffraff 
Of formless things tell of his harm I 



IN PASSING THROUGH, 87 

No reins of ^4i)o1lis can hold 

The furies of the tempest's sweep; 

He may as well return to fold 

Whence issued forces uncontrolled, 

Though ancients locked them in his keep. 

Demons of the stormy sky, 

What god- womb of the world can hold 
Each thundering Shade or Deity 
That stands the symbol of the sigh 

The Tempest heaves when full of scold? 

Can Greek or Roman Pantheon, 

Or wilder y^sir of the north, 
Or Deva where the gods begun, 
Ahura of the burning sun, 

Tell whence or when the Storm comes forth? 

1 see in tempests Thor of old ; 

I see in lightnings mjolnir hurl'd; 
The crashing is his stride so bold ; 
The howling winds his wrathful scold; 

His frown the darkness of the world ! 

I see a Hoder in the Gloom 

The wrath of mighty Thor pursues ; 

But Baldur soon will re-illume, 

When, resurrected from the tomb, 
He comes in all his vernal hues ! 



88 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

I see a Zeus ; a Jupiter ; 

A Ra of strange ethereal fire ; 
An Indra of the Hindu seer; 
Jehovah of the Hebrew fear, — 

All gods of Storm and Heaven's ire! 

Which one is God of all the rest 

And shadowed in the others' glow? 
Which one controls, and which is best. 
Or which can better stand the test 
Of reason here, I do not know. 

I only know that nations have — 

Each in its own peculiar way — 
Defined their gods and counted slave 
Him who believed in other save 

Their own wise superstition's sway! 

And so I turn my eyes about 

To see them all, and reason why 

Analogy, to help me out. 

Turns all into a frenzied shout. 
Their protestations much awry. 

And thus but for the poet's dream. 

Which made each wild conception fair, 

We would acknowledge it a theme 

Of barbarism, or the scheme 

Of the more blatant man of care. 



IN PASSING THROUGH, 89 

And sacred Eddas of the Nord, 

Or Sagas we once thought divine, 

Are just as much in truth's accord 

As Oriental tales of fraud 

That give us now a faith and shrine. 

xcv. 

Akin religious faith ; akin 

Desires which have brought them forth; 
Akin the passions that have been ; 
Akin the human race to sin 

And every broken trust or oath : 

Akin each age to that before, 

And that decadence bids welcome ; 
Akin the social states below, 
The brute to man, the high and low ; 

Each thing that calls this earth a home! 

Our vanity may close our eyes, 

Our egotism may control ; 
But Truth will see the linking ties, 
And how we magnify our size 

And claim a god-like, lofty, soul! 

I've seen man groping in the dark ; 

I've seen him lost in grim despair; 
I've seen him full of fear to hark 
And catch an omen from the lark, 

Or harmless leapings of the hare ! 



90 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Or radiance he sees in flame 

That is his own outo-da-fa; 
And by some martyrdom proclaim 
Reward hereafter and the fame 

That lives with fools from day to day ! 

XCVI. 

Yea, like are we in barbarous deeds 

To bestial ancestors we scorn ; 
We loudly vaunt our senseless creeds, 
And credit claim where it were needs 
We blush for thoughts so lowly born ! 

Our highest faiths are but the sum 

Of totem dreams the savage knew ; 
We give hallucinations home 
And coddle every vagrant tome 
That idly speaks of heaven's due. 

The god of Wish our fathers knew, 

When Norsemen they of simple faith. 
Is yet the god of much we do. 
The impulse that would here renew 
The little hope which wisdom hath : 

And to that god we bow and say, 

'Since Reason here is blind or dumb, 
We thank thee for the fatuous ray 
Thou givest us to light the way 

For Guess to see beyond the tomb!' 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 9I 

XCVII. 

The total of life's subtilties 

Is not the sum of any faith : 
Within them all some frenzy tries 
To paint more brilliantly hope's skies 

To please the fancy of earth's wraith! 

And when men's faiths dispute and war, 

It is the strife of fools, withal ; 
' ris bigotry that brings the jar 
To social peace and helps debar 

Love's scheme of brotherhood to all. 

Arbitrament of war is death 

Death to the faiths that stir the strife ; 
Death to the soul's diviner breath 
That wakes the hopes within, and death 

To dreams which would enchant this life. 

Stir man to see the little light 

A faith can cast and he will scorn 

Its feeble ray and find delight 

In setting all the world aright. 

Though disenchantment so is born : 

A disenchantment that will blight 
Our hopes in dreams of things to be ; 

Philosophy the only light 

To guide us through the starless Night 
That falls when Faith can no more see ! 



92 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Yet still each tongue should tell the truth 
Though hope be lost and faith denied ; 
What profits man to hide the ruth 
That some experience will, forsooth. 
Bring on us in our pomp of pride? 

Whatever mysticism may 

Our judgment for awhile confuse, 
A reason will arise some day, — 
If we'll but give our thoughts fair play, — 

And proneing minds will disabuse. 

XCVIII. 

A faith in after-death depends 

On vainer selfishness in man 
Who cries his own exalted ends ; 
But naught below him thither tends — 

If egotism holds the plan ! 

The subtleties he brings to bear 

To prove divinity of life, 
Are in behalf of his own care ; 
The rest are all denied a share 

In things immortal — though of strife ! 

Yet, if analogy be true, 

The least that lives is as divine 
As any Spark that ever blew 
In soul of him whose wisdom knew 

The right from wrong as they entwine! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 93 

XCIX. 

The vastness of the world is awe 

To man or brute of finite mind; 
We're seeking ever after Law, 
But learn not that expression's flaw 

Is in the words which have defined. 

The bigot says that man alone 

Has consciousness and eye of truth ; 

And yet how know we that our scorn 

Hides not a due more lowly born — 
A due we owe the brute, insooth.? 

Our moral sense is born of fear; 

Of fear and profit got of peace : 
We shoulder social state of care. 
To let our selfishness compare 

The burden with the ill's increase, 

And, finding more of ill than good, 

We lay it to some Deity : 
Our own shortcomings then we hood 
To wash with faith's " vicarious blood " 

And claim " elected purity " ! 

C. 
O Vanity that would aspire 

To Homes celestial but debar 
Thy fellows from " ethereal fire " 
Because by nature their desire 

Is speechless at the earthly bar ! 



94 ^^ PASSING THROUGH. 

Who knows but what the Spirit moves 

As much in acorns as in men? 
And that the throbbing- Forest proves 
Some Animation that behooves 

A patient mercy there again? 

Humanity, thou framest laws; 

But be thou governed by the tie 
Of Sentiency! Plead thou the cause 
Of mercy ere some Life doth pause, 

Through man's abuse, to sink and die! 

Bless, too, the creed that sees a soul 

In tree or flower, beast or bird ; 
That lets an angel's touch control 
The impulse of a savage soul 

Which laughs to give Destruction word : 

For Pantheism is divine ! 

What fairer God evolved by thought 
Stands symbol for a brighter shrine 
Than that all things etern combine 

To leave us happiness so wrought? 

CI. 

Who has not seen a summer's dawn 

Where peaks and clouds were tinged with red ; 
Where light, like scimeter out-drawn, 
Sharp cleaved the Night, so ghastly v\^an, 

To splash its blood on skies o'erhead, 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 

The blood to spread as blush of day 
So bidding welcome to the Sun? 

So comes the light of Truth : so may 

A Genius rise with shooting ray 

To light the gloom P'eat feeds upon ! 

The rose of Fancy coyly blushed 

Its richness in the brain of man, 
And fertile Imagery was flushed, 
And wild Invention, soaring, hushed, 
When Genius came the world to scan. 

When Genius came the world to scan 

It saw a Homer lost in lore, 
It saw a Shakespeare in the man, 
It saw a Milton's range and span ; 

It gave their souls impulse to soar; 

To sweep the earth and skies of truth 

To crystalize in gems of thought ; 
To seize the world's departing youth, 
Transfix its beauty and its blowth 

And chain the image Time had wrought! 

It taught a Pindar, nursed a Burns 

I'o sing the psalms of pain and toil ; 
It woke a Dante's soul with yearns 
For Paradise and love that spurns 

The doubt that hangs on Faith's recoil; 



95 



96 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

It SO enriched the hampered mind 

Imagination leaped to see 
The beauties that were undefined 
Though all around it here consigned. 

Awaiting Genius to be free! 

CII. 

When Genius came upon the world 

It met a cold reception there : 
It found the human heart was churl'd, 
And low all aspirations hurl'd 

By mundane mockery and despair : 

It found a barren field for work ; 

Cocagne of brag for Paradise ! 
A mental caliber to shirk ; 
A spirit more depraved to lurk, 

Bethwarting all that Honor tries I 

It eked its day 'mid toil and pain ; 

It labored for its visioned goal ; 
With patience gathered little gain, 
And for that bore the brunt and bain — 

The stigma of a witless soul I 

Too deep for fellowship, at first 

Poor Genius was pronounced a fool ! 
But shackles of the mind it burst 
And lit the gloom of things accurst. 

And gave each wandering thought a rule. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 



97 



Its force creative stirred, withal ; 

A Titan was within the strife : 
Volition leaped to duty's call — 
Olympian heights could ne'er appall 

The impulse born of such a life ! 

The future pays the homage due 

The heroes of the scornful past; 
And Fame, thougli laggard with the new, 
Adorns the dead, and hides from view 
The rancor that could never last. 

cm. 

On wings we soar when thoughts have sway 

Untrammeled by terrestrial bounds, 
And phantom creatures people day. 
And thoughts delight in elfish play 

When Fancy plodding Fact confounds : 

For slumbering in the soul is spark 
Of wild, unmanumitted, thought ; 

Strike fetters off, and, like a lark, 

It soars aloft describing mark 

Of that ethereal Forces wrought ! 

x\nd thus was fashioned man's delight; 

And from this source sprung songs of love 
And many visions thus had flight 
To blush the nadir of the Night 

And trace a mock-dawn high above ! 



98 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

CIV. 

The Kalpa of a world it sees ; 

Annihilation in its end : 
An Avatar of blissful ease 
Wherein a Vishnu comes to please 

And human strife with love to blend ; 

Or threshold of Elysium 

And naught but peace forevermore ; 
Or dawn of Hope's Millennium 
With rest of all that's wearisome, 

Or what may start a thought of woe I 

It matters not the faith or creed, 

Nor what we call the goal and end ; 
Each Age and Nation knows God's deed. 
And claims as true alone its creed— 
The rest to wild delusion tend ! 

And Wisdom labors still in vain 

To open minds locked in conceit ; 
And though the world has borne the stain 
Of warring faiths upon its plain, 
No sect as yet will own defeat ! 

For man is ever vain to boa^st 

A truth beyond his mental grasp ; 
And when in deepest mystery lost 
And thought in chaos truly tost. 
He claims to see Delusion's clasp! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 99 

And SO we pass from stage to stage 
Reviewing Life's vain earthly span ; 

Now marveling at the wit's engage, 

Now laughing at the antic wage 
That marks the pageantry of man, 

cv. 

The fairest of the flowers grown 

In soil of man's existence here, 
Is Truth, ani though but feebly blown, 
Its perfume is the richest known 

In making sweet the social sphere. 

A tonic of the soul its balm 

Can heal the wound a lie has rent, 
Soothe Conscience of its aching qualm, 
And bring to troubled thoughts a calm 
Divine within its sweet content. 

And wheresoever throned is Truth 

There is the shrine of all that's good ; 
And there may Virtue live in youth 
Though seeing cumbent head of Ruth 
Bowed to its rosary and rood! 

CVI, 

The hills are brown ; the trees show stains 
Of gold and red 'mid fading green ; 

The furrowed fields for winter grains 

Stretch faraway o'er searing mains, 
And lonely is the passing scene. 



lOO IN PASSING THROUGH. 

The sky is clear and calm and blue, 

And silence reigns within the day; 
And all around the brilliant hue 
Of dying Summer meets the view — 
The blush of verdure in decay. 

We know by drifting leaves and sighs 

That sunny hours of joy are few ; 
We know by opalescent skies 
And russet woods, that Nature dies 
To pay the rolling Seasons' due : 

And now to Winter's ruthless care 

The subtle charms of Summer hie ; 
And trees to biting winds will bare 
Their trunks to stand grim spectres there- 
Bleak monuments to parts that die. 

CVII. 

Autumnal days, Autumnal days. 

What sadness in your fleeting scene ! 
What visions float within the haze 
That comes with earth's departing rays, 
The fading glow of summer's sheen? 

Yea, like a funeral pyre of life, 

A blaze of glory is your death ; 
And all decadence here is rife 
With sad remembrance of the strife 
Harassing everything of breath. 



IN PASSING THROUGH, lOI 

The winds cry through your drooping boughs 

'Stho' wailing death of all that's good; 
While petals of frost-faded flowers, 
And fronds of seed, in drifting showers, 
Are scattered in the fields and wood : 

And in the dying year we see 

The symbol of Life's fleeting span ; 

We see the Great stript as the tree, 

And, reft of honor, left to be 
The simulacrum of the Man ! 

We see the goal of Faith and Hope 
Fall from its sceptred throne on high ; 

We see proud Grandeur's downward slope, 

The narrow range of all its scope 
Wherein to live and fight and die ; 

And seeing this we know how vain 
Is man to boast his might or worth ; 

For in Time's reckoning it is plain 

His glory cannot long remain 
For exultation on this earth. 

cvm. 

In scenes like these what truths arise 

Awakening dreams to thoughts profound? 
Proud man may face with true surprise 
The shifting of each fellow's guise — 

Which brings all heads low to the ground ! 



I02 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

The Carpo season of the world 

When man should gather harvests in : — 
llist thou so garnered up each pearl 
Of wisdom? or been dunce or churl 

To fill thy coffers full of sin? 

Thy day of need draws now apace : 
Need of the riches fled and gone ! 
Need of the happiness we chase 
In childhood's blissful hour, or trace 
In benisons the man hath known ! 

The dole of Spring and Summer flies ; 

'Tis Autumn brings us thought's regret 
A buoyant heart 'neath brilliant skies 
In gloomy weather often dies, 

If other moods bid it forget ; 

Forget that future days may want 

The things so lavish to the youth, 
When Plenty pines till lean and gaunt 
The seasons find the man, his vaunt 
The mock of senile hope and truth ! 

CIX. 

And yet these Autumn days that bring 

Sad memories of pleasures past, 
Or show us faults that left their sting, 
Can also give us thoughts of Spring, 
Reanimating all at last ! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. lO 

Earth dies, but Death is only sleep, 
And, Baldur like, it wakes again 
To bring us joy, and, while we weep 
Its death, old Time doth slowly creep 
To bring us Life, sunshine and rain ; 

Sunshine and ram to quicken Life 
And hurry pleasures to their place; 

To stir the nascent germ of strife ; 

To bud the fields with blossoms rife 
With all the hues the rainbows trace : 

For, Winter past, the earth again 

Blooms forth in beauty and in cheer ; 
And, what in gloom has fearful been, 
May prove a good with power to win 
The soul from its low groveling care. 

So may it be with all ; and when 
Senescent grown, may newer Light 

Illume the sky and once again 

Reanimate the Soul and then 

Bid morning to the chill of Night ! 

ex. 

Farewell ye passing days of joy ! 

Farewell ye seasons full of youth ! 
Farewell, but let our hopes employ 
Your visions left recalling joy 

To spirits darkened by the truth : 



I04 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Farewell ! we wait the advent here 

Of Springtime with its skies of blue ; 
And, 'round the lire-side's glowing cheer, 
We'll sit and dream while seasons drear 
Creep on to all the world renew : 

We'll wait and while we eke the hour 

We'll talk of moments once enjoyed ; 
And through imagination's power 
That colors thought's mysterious flower, 
We'll live as though again employed. 

Most of our pleasures are in dreams, 

And absence stills each aching pain ; 
Aloof, the past a heaven seems 
So full the glow of mellowed beams 

That fall entrancing Manhood's wane. 

Most of our ills imagined, too, 
Or self-inflicted without cause ; 

The grusomeness of thoughts to do 

The ill that ages long may rue 

Unconscious of these sequent laws. 

So Wisdom would the chalice fling, 

All brimming with its poisoned draught, 
Into the Past to let the sting 
Left from its bitter contents bring 
The thoughts of other potions quaft. 



N PASSING THROUGH. lO: 



CXI. 



Then fill the empty bowl of cheer ! 

Heap fagots on the smouldering fire! 
We'll toast and drink to seasons drear, 
The bumpers sparkling ruby tear 

Shed by old Summer to expire! 

Around the hearth-stone of our home 
We'll talk of days of joy and pain ; 
We'll talk of times when weary roam 
Oppressed each wanderer without home 
Or social comfort in his plane ; 

We'll watch the silhouetted dreams 

Traced by the fire's soft flickering light; 
Deciphering faces in the beams 
Instinct with life : for truly seems 
This fancy to the mind to-night. 

We're young again and springtide stirs 
The first impulse of youth, and Love 
Is raptuous with each hope that purrs 
To wish, and to the heart recurs 
The image of departed Love ! 

Too soon the soot mars fairness seen, 

And we have blackened embers there 
Of Fancy's dream ! A truth, I ween, 
That lacks not vision that is keen 
To pierce hallucinations fair! 



Io6 IN PASSING THR.OUGH. 

For when the flames in ashes lie 

The dream they shadowed forth is sped; 

The wish that gave it birth to die 

And leave the bosom with its sigh 
That interest in it all is dead. 

And interest is the zest of life, 

The spice that seasons things, which, when 
We lose, it leaves us but the strife 
And eking of a dreary life 

In routine of itself again. 

CXII. 

The dream dispelled, we see the fact 
That rudely hurls our idols down : 
Life is a season's strange compact 
'Tween Growth and stern Decay ; an act 
Omnific with a fatal crown ! 

Each season is a symbol, too, 

That marks the different stages here : 

In Spring and Summer Force is new 

And full of energy to do 

The part that wish may hold as dear ; 

In Autumn powers weaken fast 

And shed their bloom for ripened thought ; 
In Winter comes the leadened cast 
When thoughts would linger in the past 

And hoard what memory has caught : 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 

'Tis then the May-day's song and sky, 

And Youth and Love 'neath basking sun 
And Autumn with its rich supply, 
December's want, hoar Age's cry. 
Are in our dreams compounded one : 

■'Tis then the virtuous acts of youth 

Know their reward's vitality ; 
'Tis then man feels the strength of truth. 
The throb and sting of folly's ruth 

If life was passed in vanity. 

The Ages are as Life, each one 

An epoch isof good or bad ; 
A day of silly quib and pun 
Where folly is the rule, or one 

Wherein the senses are not mad : 

Each leaves its mark to coming years : 

The eon of the dunce to pass 
Degenerating hopes and fears; 
The age of Virtue into years 

Bright with the deeds that merit has. 

CXIIL 

Belike this age unto the first 

In which some folly was the rule ; 
For true the world is foully curst 
With pompous Vanity, and, worst 
Of all, the iofnorance of the fool ! 



:o7 



Io8 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

We magnify our little wits 

And think the dupe's diversions wise ; 
We mumble Folly's choice tidbits 
And move to sentimental fits, 

And claim a knowledge by surmise! 

A paresis has come, indeed, 

To mark this vaunted age of man ! 
Degenerate his social creed, 
And lower still the thought and deed 
Now circumscribed by Fashion's span ! 

So, with the passing of the year, 

We mark decadence of the race : 
Each manly attribute is queer : 
The woman takes the leading share — 
To run the world with powdered face ! 

A spasm of rare sentiment 

For what is called a " bondage " here, 
Has led the age to wild intent 
That time will show irrelevant 

To object of a woman's care. 

If she indeed lacks liberty, 

'Tis by her nature, not through man : 
She is a slave to Fashion's plea ; 
The dupe of vain Frivolity ; 

The coquette of a fad and fan ! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. IO9 

First let her free herself and then 
Lend helping hand for her advance 

A mind so narrowed in its ken 

That show is all supreme, again 

Must strive for freedom's arm and lance. 

CXIV. 

Her present stride marks man's decay, 
And not her own advancement here; 

Effeminate -he is to-day. 

And social fallacies betray 

Conditions that the wise may fear. 

He calls surrender ' chivalry ' ! 

Surrender of his rank in life ! 
Surrender of virility 
For cozened smile Viginity 

May cast him for his sensual strife ! 

The " age of chivalry " must stand 

The commentation of the fool ; 
Not that a courtesy is bann'd, 
But that a tournament is plann'd 

By cockneys of a woman's rule. 

We call " Dark Age " of history 

The time man was the w^oman's slave; 
When "Knighthood" was the vanity, 
And strife for plume or glove, decree 
Of Honor with the dolt and knave! 



no IN PASSING THROUGff. 

Cervantes is not but the day 

For his return is drawing nigh ; 

The clamor is for marshal play ; 

Reward is in a smile or lay 
To gallantry that is aw^ry ! 

cxv. 

O modesty, O modesty, 

Where art thou flown in this mad chase 
Of brazen woman who would ply 
Her arts to help her to decry 

Distinction in the sex and race? 

Attired as man she apes his ways 

And claims a right to thwart the end 
Of nature, and, in her wild craze, 
To social functions gives a phase 

That naught of virtue can commend. 

The comely creature of our dream — 

Which Romance loves to weave in tale- 
Is but a barren thought, 'twould seem, 
Throbbed to beguile the troubled stream 
Of life, or hush love's piteous wail. 

The bifurcated creature now 

Despises all and is despised ; 
Her way the world will sure allow, - 
But man will make with her no vow 

In that she lacks all he has prized. 



IN PASSING TPIROUGH. Ill 

CXVI. 

Ill literature the woman rules ! 

Ideas of the man are low ; 
tje wanders after certain '^ schools " ; 
He mystifies himself and pules 

Like any child for passing show! 

For ' schools ' of imbecility 

Where want of thought is merit shown ; 
The writer of this day must sigh, 
Ejaculate, and show how nigh 

To simper madness he is grown! 

Must deal in some uncouth conceit, 

And drivel in his metaphors ; 
Must prove his weary thoughts effete, — 
And commentation is complete 

When critic praise rewards his course! 

CXVII. 

A maudlin age has come upon 

Us in this evil hour of grace ; 
Around the things which we should shun 
Is hung the halo duty won, 

And Sin presents a smiling face! 

For woman sways the world; her grief 
She cries o'er judgment of the law ; 

And for a brute she prays relief ; 

Strews flowers in his path as if 
The road of dalliance that he saw 



112 IN PASSIxVG THROUGH. 

Was God's device to lead him in 
And so accomplish end divine ! — 

The will of God can be no sin ! — 

A Paradise that brute will win 

Although atrocious deeds combine 

'Mong brutes to make this world a hell 
More dreadful by His helpful hand ! 

And so by woman's gentle spell, 

We must to justice say farewell 

And let the foolish take command ! 

CXVIII. 

" 'Tis better ninety-nine be lost 

Than one be left alone in sin ! " 
And this is what the fable cost 
That told of prodigal once lost 

But to return to fold again 

For great rejoicing and love-feast 

Of " Fatted Calf," and honor's place ! 

Reward for being once a beast 

Prone to the wallow and the yeast 
Of passions that alone debase ! 

" Each youth has sometime ' wild oats' sown, 
And each must feel a ' whirl-wind's ' breath 
For by iniquity is shown, 
In contrast, God's care for his own. 
And woeful end of Sin and Death ! " 



IN PASSING THROUGH. II3 

A fable sounding well, 'tis true, 

But lacking wisdom and foresight ; 
For should the world once turn to do 
As such would teach, it would renew 
The ages loathed as Reason's night. 

CXIX. 

The sowing of *•' wild oats " is done 
When Life is withered to old age ; 

And harvest of the " whirl- wind's " fun 

Is a perennial, lasting one. 

Recorded in each day and page! 

The youth by some wild passion tost 

May be reclaimed, but he is one 
To thousands in their folly lost ; " 
And reformations often cost 

The worth of what an hundred won! 

Sin as a hero can not pose 

Without results we must deplore ; 

And pleasures once begot of woes 

Will find some relic of the throes 
Remaining but to prick the sore : 

For nature takes account of all : 

You can not pay her with a word ! 

She holds the debtor for his fall ; 

She gives inheritance the gall 

Bequeathed of ills we thought deferred ! 



114 IN PASSI^^G TIIIIOUGH- 

cxx. 

But yet this is the trend of thought — 
Of modern thought effete and vain ! 
And he who is not frenzy fraught 
By luring sighs, is deemed as naught, 
Or brute or madman to refrain ! 

A thing of mystery and scorn ; 

A creature wanting heart and soul; 
Misogynist of woman's wain, 
Because he does not fondle, fawn, 

And give the petticoat control! 

'Mid fawning life alone he seems 

Because with thoughts more lonely sti] 
He finds that pleasures all are dreams, 
And that the mind with visions teems 
When that it entertains the will. 

Poor man to cherish no conceit — 

For wantonness doth still disguise ! 
How rude unto thyself to treat 
The heart in its love-wakened beat 
For what it profits to be wise! 

CXXI. 

I fear he can not love, and why? 

Not that he lacks the sentiment. 
Nor passion born of lust, nor sigh 
Of fellowship, nor wish to cry 

The need of any soul's content, 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Nor eye for beauty, nor the heart 

That holds in solace thoughts devout, 

Nor brain for artifice or art, 

Nor any impulse for tlie part 

Of fancy nor in pleasure's bout; 

Not these, but that he hath an eye 
Which sellish secrets would discern; 

A spirit that would lust defy 

And stifle in the throat the lie 

That here would spring to do Love's turn, 

Man loves when selfishness doth reign ; 

He hates when broken is its rule ; 
He fears when knowledge would explain 
The trend of passions, now they train 

The will to make it folly's tool. 

Love is of Lust, and Lust of Life, 

And Life is spark through this desire; 

It is a chain linked here in strife, 

And every forging still is rife 
With evils of the natal fire! 

How low soever sprung that germ. 

It kindred bears to all the past ; 
And, though exalted, still a worm 
Which stings and bites an earthly term, 
To wiggle back to dust at last ! 



Il6 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Survival in life's battle here 

Has higher aim or lower mark 
As rules the intellect, or fear, 
Or wantonness, or driveling care, 
Or lightest humor of the lark. 

CXXII. 

We'll not admit that Love is Lust, 

Desire on which the race depends, 
And yet once give the passions trust 
And all restraints too soon will burst 
To bare the heart to vicious ends ; 

To bare the heart and leave it prone 

To mischief and its nameless deeds ; 
The light we thought within us shone, 
So smothered in its sensual zone 

It throws no ray on senseless creeds! 

'Tis thus the closets still must bear 
The skeletons of much professed ; 
And virtue, which man doth declare 
Is due to faith, finds little care 

When faith is guide alone or test! 

CXXIII. 
Move on, O Time, we can not stay 

The wheels of cycles slipping by ! 
Each moment is a cam, each day 
A splicing felloe on the way 

To circuit of Eternity ! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Each change escapement of the flow 
Recorded on the dial Earth ; 

Each phase decree for Life to show 

Its adaptation here to grow 
And fix itself for future birth. 

Before inventive brain or hand 

Caught at thy fleeting images, 

Thou hadst the power to command 

And stamp thy changes on the land 

And sea, in heaven's prodigies. 

A god to ancients, yet to man 

A fate that knows no sympathy; 
Thou breakest up his boasted plan 
And measurest off his little span 
To give him Death's infinity! 

Thou bringest labors which are vain ; 

Thou settest him in divers ways; 
He hopes some knowledge here to gain. 
But moves at tangent by the strain 

Of thy recurring change and phase ! 

He strives and struggles and would give 

Life's energies in hopes to know 
The secret of Want's suppletive — 
And when he has but learned to live. 
Death comes to bid him rise and go! 



Il8 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

O Time, thou abstract chain of woes! 

Thou link of blisses forged to God! 
Thou " fleeting image " of the pose 
Eternity a moment shows 

To change with swiftness of a nod! 

For Father Chronos still devours 

The offspring of his gat to-day : 
The earth and sea and Being's powers, 
The sun's fair rays, the blushing flowers, 
And everything of breath and clay ! 

CXXIV. 

From Youth to Age and Age to Death, 
Man would each life hold in review ; 
Would trace each struggling thing of breath, 
Count throbs from birth to pain of death. 
And wonders note in passing through : 

He would the purpose and the end, 

And so the final Destiny ; 
And what repays one to contend, 
And what reward when actions trend 

To ethics of philosophy ; 

Philosophy of wisdom born, 

Not cant of Epicurean brew ; 
Nor cult of sterner Stoic's scorn ; 
Nor any special ssytem's spawn ; 

But all compounded in the new : 



IN PASSING THKOUGH. II9 

The broad idea of the man 

Begot of all the ages gone ; 
Whose judgment, with its greater span, 
The future may the better plan 

And blaze the way that leads us on. 

To such an eye the scene is one 

Of fleckered lights and shades of strife. 

Predominating now the Sun 

With gladsome light of duty done, 
And then the Shadows of each life ; 

Unfolding so a tale of woe 

That hangs upon a feeble breath, 
Yet blasting hopes of fortunes glow. 
And making of this life a bore 

That ends but in the gasps of Death ! 

But if man's wisdom can not see 
Beyond this wild, abysmal, gloom ; 

If all his hopes of bliss to be 

Are lost in wise Philosophy, 

Why shudder at a fancied doom? 

'Twere better in the peaceful state 

Oblivion promises to all, 
Than all this rancor and debate 
Aroused to tell the tale of fate 

That none can alter or forestall. 



I20 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

cxxv. 

Life, Death, and the Hereafter, men 

Come prating of as though they knew 
Aught of God's purpose, how or when 
He moves or wills, or, even then, 
What He has set for us to do. 

They would prescribe their Deity 

And set a limit to His will ! 
He who professes here an eye 
That sees into the future, why. 

He little knows his feeble skill ! 

The utmost that each one can learn 
Is that he simply nothing knows, 

Save that to him the world is stern, 

And labors rise at every turn 
Harassing Life unto its close. 

CXXVI. 

We know that we know nothing, yet 

The world is full of pedantry 
That wisely looks and nods to let 
True wisdom see its worth and get 
A plumbing of mentality ! 

We know that we know nothing, then 

Why here profess an eye, or mind. 
That sees, or comprehends God when 
The knowledge in itself would then 

Prove us but stumbling creatures blind? 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Or if we know God's wish or word, 
Why all these divers faiths and ways? 

Are warring tenets here absurd 

To give the Devil all the herd 
Of wild fanatics of each craze? 

CXXVII. 

We know that we know nothing, but 

We grasp at things intangible, 
And blindly fall into the rut 
Of Ignorance that's worn and cut 
By folly indefensible. 

We here conjecture, or we guess. 

And trust ourselves to be deceived ; 
We get our thoughts into a mess 
x\nd horror minds with some distress 
'Twere foolish, sure, to be believed! 

The lesson Time would teach us all 

Is that we only half can see ; 
And that the story of "Man's Fall," 
In such half-light, is fable all, 

As well as knowing what's to be. 

CXXVIII. 

Believe or not, man's faith is shorn 
Of much that lent a pleasing ray ; 
We must confess that place and bourne 
Of Death's dark Province is unknown. 
And blank the speech of fanes each day 



122 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Faith is not here advanced by sight, 

Nor foresight cleared by help of Faith ; 
The coming of the mental light 
Estrange the two, and each with might 
Assails the other's fading wraith! 

'Tis hard to bring ourselves to say 

The " light " we thought we saw in youth 

Was but a feeble, flickering ray 

Of egotism : when its day 

Is past comes advent of the Truth ! 

Though knowledge gives us wider range 

For play of all the intellect, 
The mind is rid of creatures strange, 
And P'aith can never more arrange 

Incongruous thoughts to such aspect. 

Each age has martyred someone who 
Denied the faith that ruled his day ; 

And each accusor found his rue, 

And Bigotry that rose and slew. 
Lived to behold its own dismay ! 

CXXIX. 

Like flights of strange, migrating birds. 

Or shadows chasing flying clouds, 
We meet in wild, stampeding, herds, 
To mingle, pass, or greet with words 
Unheard, or lost within the crowds; 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 12^ 

We meet within a narrow span. 

We glance into a kindly face ; 
We feel a kindredship in man ; 
We seek a comrade there who can 

Help us to eke the time and place : 

We meet and dream a sweet conceit ; 

We find an object then to love ; 
But ere that dream is yet complete, 
Some babbling fact will sure defeat 

The end — and in the Night we move ! 

We meet and pass and scarcely know 
What thing did disenchant our dream ; 

The dullness of the after-glow 

We feel, but find the light no more. 
And see alone a fancied beam ! 

Love is the child of youthful days, 

The sweet companion of old age ; 
Consoling in its willful ways, 
Tormenting if the truth portrays 

The just demerit of its rage. 

The light we saw in passing eye 

Was but desire within our own ; 
Reflection's cast too soon to die 
And leave us but the wistful sigh 

That comes to tell us hope is flown ! 



124 ^^ PASSING THROUGH. 

cxxx. 

We meet in highways of this life, 

We nod and pass and then forget ; 
Our thoughts insistent on the strife 
We wage for station, rank and life : 
And so it simply stands, ' we met ' ! 

'Twere better we should meet and part 

And strangers so continue still. 
Than that we should awake a heart 
To feel the keen and bitter smart 

That comes with knowledge of its ill. 

The dreaiii might stir a latent flame 

That best were left in slumber deep ; 
And passion might arouse to claim 
A mastery and bring to shame 
The spirit of our restful sleep. 

Adieu, we say. and kiss our hand, 
Departing on our several ways : 
We thus retain our heart's command 
And wisely see and understand 
The danger of a passing craze ! 

CXXXI. 

And so we journey on to age 

And winter of the dying year ; 
Recording hope and joy and rage 
And pain and death on every page 
The Book of Life doth open here. 



IN PASSING THROUGH, 

A strange fatality it seems 

Attends us on our lowly way ; 
Lives frothing like fierce mountain streams 
That leap wild cataracts — for beams. 
Of light to flash the rainbow's ray! 



But Dawn or Eve hath rainbow-ray, 

And not the Noon-tide's burning light ; 

The first forewarning for the day, 

The other promise that we may 

See less of Storm within the Night ! 

They both betokening broken skies 
That sift the sunshine of a hope ; 
They speak of balmy seasons, dyes 
Of spring, and not the winter skies 
Which lower heaven's gloomy scope. 

CXXXII. 

In summing up the deeds of earth 

We find more ills withal than bliss ; 
Conflicting from the hour of birth 
Are all the acts v/e deem of worth, 
And none of themi gives happiness! 

A serpent coils within the nest 

Of happy bird that buildeth low ; 
And lowly mortals seeking rest 
May find a dungeon as their quest, 
And peace but pain forevermore ! 



126 IN PASSING THROUGH, 

All greatness is of little worth, 

Tho' magnified to worldly eyes, 
And equal is the lowest birth 
To the most lordly one of earth, 
For each is leveled when he dies! 

N-o artifice can Time convince, 

Nor trick devise a happiness ; 
The old, the young, or pauper, prince, 
All in some earthly stock must wince, 
And here endure some painful stress. 

Who finds contentment gropes it blind, 

Is proverb learned too late in life ; 
And strength is wasted in the wind 
Of thought and deed we give to find 
A way avoiding earthly strife. 

No happiness, no earthly bliss 

Awarding pains or sorrows borne ; 

As light as silly Fancy's kiss 

Is the caress of Happiness, 

And we arouse to find it gone ! 

To find it gone and in its place 
The void of utter loneliness ; 
Sweet memory alone to trace 
The cherished hope, the wily grace. 
That contrast here this evil press ! 



IN PASSING THROUGH. I27 

No happiness ! no happiness ! 

I've reached the point where Envy cries 
For lot of others, yea, in stress 
Of anything that holds caress 

For simple life or human sighs ! 

The cynic laughs awhile but sneers 
Oft hide a bleeding heart of woe! 

The snarl is mark of wasted tears, 

The lesson what the scornful years 

Have taught a tender heart to know ! 

'Tis Faith that soonest finds the road 

Which leads to Doubt and Hope's despair; 
A Timon bears the greatest load, 
Since, trusting all the vicious horde, 
He pays for laying bosom bare! 

For throwing bosom bare for ' daws ' 
To pluck the heart within their greed ; 

Voracious here to fill their maws ; 

Inhuman in observing laws 

Professed to govern Christian creed! 

CXXXIII. 

In reason then we cry for change 

And hope thereby to find less pain ; 
Hath not old Nature wider range 
Than walks confined which here estrange 
By jostling ill on ill again? 



128 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

A change! a change! O Heavens, why 

A lagging day, a lazy hour? 
A tendium of thought, a sigh 
For absent things while those near by 
To satisf}' have not the power? 

And yet if all things came at will 

Our every wash to gratify, 
Would we the happier be? or still 
Dissatisfied and deem as ill 

The fortune that attends a sigh? 

The unattainable we seek ; 

The thing possessed we oft dispise ; 
Regrets and longings make us weak ; 
We're constant only to the bleak 

And chill despairs of earthly cries 

Unsettled so is life. Content 

Is something no man ever knew ; 
And fruitless are his labors spent 
Who thinks by force of his intent 
To pfain a measure of his due. 

CXXXIV. 

The winter hath its moaning winds, 
Its pall and shroud for earth's decay ; 

A gloomy dome the eye confinds ; 

The Spirit of the year repines 

Within the barren woods and lay. 



IN PASSING THROUGH. 1 39 

From leadened skies great flakes come forth 

Like spotless doves from cote on high ; 
They drift and scatter as though loath 
To bide command that sent them forth 
The fleecy troopers of the sky ! 

They drift and marshal till the earth 

Is covered with a robe of white, 
As ermined for some deed of worth, 
Or clothed within the shift of dearth 

To hide its barrenness from sight : 

And aged seems it then, withal, 
And plaintive, too, its feeble cry ; 

And mighty trees like spectres tall, 

Or monuments of death, recall 

The thoughts to mock of Destiny! 

cxxxv. 

When hair is colored as the snow. 

And form is bent and eye is dim, 
'Tis then man's feebleness we know, 
And what repays for all his show 

Of valor battling for life's whim. 

He is the sport of Time, withal ; 

The play thing of a passing day ; 
A breath of momentary thrall ; 
A sigh that flees its own recall ; 

An impulse of an atom's play! 



130 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

His birth is Spark struck from the flint 

Of Unknown Forces, and his youth 
And age are rounds of labor's dint 
In Nature's workshop ; but no hint 
Is given of the natal truth ! 

Nor of the pause which seasons bring, 
And which we call his earthly death ; 

The Unknowns to the Unknowns fling 

This hyperbolic, flaming, Thing 
We call a Life, a Soul, a Breath ! 

Man is, and that is all we know : 

He goes, and Speculation's dream 
Tells where! No probing here below 
Has reached as yet that " Other Shore," 
However wisely Faith may " deem " ! 

CXXXVI. 

We see our friends around us die ; 

We clasp their hands in gripless fold. 
And close their eyes, and wonder why 
The Beings can so silent lie 

While bodies waste in earthly mould. 

The deed is one of love : the thought 

The child of its own mystery. 
The Force that moved the one has wrought 
Conditions of the other; taught 

The mind its impotence to see! 



IN PASSING TII.lOUGil. i^I 

The earth is parent and the grave 

Of you and me and all we know ! 
Within its bosom sleep the brave, 
And winds sweep ihrough the vaulted na\e 

Of Faith, deriding in their blow! 

CXXXVII. 

Blow, Winds of pitiless death, blow on! 

Blow till your hate in fury dies 1 
Blow, blow till chilling shades creep on 
To drink the rays Hyperion 

Would give the earth to light its skies ! 

Blow till the Night of Destiny 

Engulfs the cringing soul of Man! 

Blow till this mundane sphere is free 

Of Life and Love and Phantasy, 

And Death and Hate the ages span ! 

Blow through the night of Gloom and 111 : 
Blow through the shadowy vale of Death! 

Blow till the howl of Manes fill 

The echoing cave and barren hill : 

Blow till Destruction gasps for breath ! 

Blow then on deathless earth your gale — 

Maruts to wake its Life again ! 
Blow till the buds of Youth regale 
The scene once more to blush the pale 

Of Death with blossoms that have been! 



133 IN PASSING THROUGH. 

Blow! blow Rejuvenescence's dawn! 

Blow life to Hope's perennial Spring! 
Blow Youth and Beauty into brawn 
Of Manhood with its strength unshorn : 

Blow till the happy w^elkins ring! 

Blow all your bitterness and then 
Blow zephyrs of a soothing fame ! 

Blow out the fears that once have been ; 

Breathe peace and happiness again, 

And fan to life Love's smouldering flame ! 



